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From: yba@mit-athena.ARPA (Mark H Levine)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Re: The Turing Test - machines vs. p - (nf)
Message-ID: <213@mit-athena.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 22-Jul-84 13:15:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-athe.213
Posted: Sun Jul 22 13:15:25 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Jul-84 04:07:15 EDT
References: <361@pucc-i>
Organization: MIT, Project Athena, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 43

<Dave Seaman, re: phd thesis and orals passing>

You are trivializing the point, not understanding it.  The test of whether
an engineer understands engineering is he can design and build things
that work.  I have met Ph.D.s who can write "learned" papers but cannot
"do" anything concrete.

If you must have a test, I'll assert that someone who can apply knowledge
of a field to a new area, and can transmit that knowledge to another who
was previously ignorant of said knowledge such that that person can apply
the knowledge in the same way, has understanding (yes, it's recursive).

Measurement of AI performance is important.  It is notions like "test"
that cause people to confuse "production systems" with "expert systems".
You may recall that the original notion of "expert system" was "a system
that solves problems the way (human) experts do".  This has been reduced
to rules-based production systems in many people's minds, because they
think that experts solve problems by applying rules.  I am not satisfied
that this is true; the question several people have asked is "does a
rules based system demonstrate an expert's intuition?"  Afterall, it passes
the "test" of applying knowledge to a problem.  You can substitute
"judgement", "intelligence", "understanding", or "talent" for the word
intuition if you like.

The question becomes rather concrete when you decide whether to allow
a program to practice medicine.  We have all heard of examples of
accredited (human) doctors who have not been able to safely practice
medicine although they passed all the qualifying "tests".

In fact, there seems to be a great body of technique floating around in
many disciplines; there is also a great lack of those who know what the
limits of application of those techniques are (usually because they
know the underlying assumptions and constraints).  I greatly fear
people who have become so proficient at using hammers that every problem
begins to resemble a nail.

I will also assert that you read my previous letter, processed the information,
responded, and did all this without understanding what I meant.  Now if we
assume you disagree, what test would you design to see which of us was
correct?  (Warning: this is a hard problem).

-- 
yba%mit-heracles@mit-mc.ARPA		UUCP:	decvax!mit-athena!yba