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From: perlis%umcp-cs%CSNet-Relay@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re:  Parallelism & Consciousness
Message-ID: <13165@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 30-Oct-83 13:27:11 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.13165
Posted: Sun Oct 30 13:27:11 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 4-Nov-83 05:20:31 EST
Lines: 53

From:  Don Perlis <perlis%umcp-cs@CSNet-Relay>


             From: BUCKLEY@MIT-OZ
             --  of  what relevance is the issue of time-behavior of an
             algorithm to the phenomenon  of  intelligence,  i.e.,  can
             there  be  in  principle  such  a  beast  as    a    slow,
             super-intelligent program?

        From: RICKL%MIT-OZ@mit-mc
        gracious,  isn't  this  a bit chauvinistic?  suppose that ai is
        eventually    successful   in  creating  machine  intelligence,
        consciousness, etc.   on  nano-second  speed  machines  of  the
        future:    we  poor humans, operating only at rates measured in
        seconds and above, will seem incredibly slow  to  them.    will
        they engage in debate about the relevance of our time- behavior
        to our intelligence?  if there cannot in principle  be  such  a
        thing  as a slow, super-intelligent program, how can they avoid
        concluding that we are not intelligent?  -=*=- rick

It seems to me that the issue isn't the 'appearance' of intelligence of
one being to another--after all, a very slow  thinker  may  nonetheless
think  very  effectively and solve a problem the rest of us get nowhere
with.  Rather I suggest that intelligence be regarded as effectiveness,
namely,  as coping with the environment.  Then real-time issues clearly
are significant.

A  supposedly brilliant algorithm that 'in principle' could decide what
to do about an impending disaster,  but  which  is  destroyed  by  that
disaster  long  before  it manages to grasp that there is a disaster,or
what its dimensions are, perhaps should not be called  intelligent  (at
least on the basis of *that* event).  And if all its potential behavior
is of this sort, so that it never really gets anything settled, then it
could  be  looked  at  as really out of touch with any grasp of things,
hence not intelligent.

Now  this  can be looked at in numerous contexts; if for instance it is
applied to the internal ruminations of the agent, eg  as  it  tries  to
settle  Fermat's  Last  Theorem, and if it still can't keep up with its
own physiology, ie,  its  ideas  form  and  pass  by  faster  than  its
'reasoning  mechanisms' can keep track of, then it there too will fail,
and I doubt we would want to say it 'really' was bright.  It can't even
be  said  to be trying to settle Fermat's Last theorem, for it will not
be able to keep that in mind.

This  is in a sense an internal issue, not one of relative speed to the
environment.  But considering that the internal and external events are
all  part  of  the  same  physical  world,  I  don't  see a significant
difference.  If the agent *can* keep track of  its  own  thinking,  and
thereby  stick  to the task, and eventually settle the theorem, I think
we would call it bright indeed,  at  least  in  that  domain,  although
perhaps  a moron in other matters (not even able to formulate questions
about them).