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From: srt@aero.org (Scott "TCB" Turner)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Eric Mueller's Daydreamer
Message-ID: <1991Jun10.165518.22724@aero.org>
Date: 10 Jun 91 16:55:18 GMT
References: <1991Jun3.075711.11333@coyote.datalog.com> <25216@well.sf.ca.us>
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John Nagle writes:
>The idea is interesting, but it seems that most of the potential
>daydreams were essentially built into the program.  As Muller [sic]
>puts it, under "Shortcomings of the Program", "DAYDREAMER cannot
>daydream for a long time and cannot generate many novel sequences".
>The program has provided to it a number of possible script fragments
>and some rules for assembling them, and the number of possible
>scripts resulting is limited.

DAYDREAMER is a finite program with no learning capability.  Naturally 
the number and kinds of daydreams it can produce is limited.

DAYDREAMER was intended as an exploration into the types of processes
involved in daydreaming.  The daydreams it produces demonstrate that
the processes and knowledge structures Mueller uses can lead to
plausible results.  DAYDREAMER is not intended as a "performance"
model of daydreaming, and it isn't meaningful to criticize it on that
basis.  I think there are some problems with DAYDREAMER, but the fact
that it can't produce an infinite number of daydreams isn't one of
them.

In AI, creativity is a much younger problem than natural language
understanding or planning.  (Because, I think, it is a much harder
problem.)  Criticizing an early creativity program because it can only
produce "limited" output is like criticizing SHRDLU because it could
only handle the blocks world.  It may be that someday we'll have 
creativity programs that, given a large knowledge base, can invent 
endlessly and fruitfully.  But at this stage of our understanding and 
research into creativity that isn't to be expected.

What you might question is whether DAYDREAMER produces enough
different daydreams to support Mueller's model of daydreaming.
Although you trivialize DAYDREAMER as a program "with some scripts and
rules to combine them" I think that reading Mueller's book will
convince most readers that DAYDREAMER does indeed perform well enough
to support the plausibility of Mueller's theories.

					-- Scott Turner