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From: kort@cad.Berkeley.EDU@hounx.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.ai
Subject: Re: Other Minds
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Date: Mon, 16-Feb-87 10:41:29 EST
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Posted: Mon Feb 16 10:41:29 1987
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Ray Allis has brought up one of my favorite subjects:  the creation
of an artificial mind.

I agree with Ray that symbol manipulation is insufficient.  In last
year's discussion of the Chinese Room, we identified one of the
shortcomings of the Room:  it was unable to learn from experience
and tell the stories of its own adventures.

The cognitive maps of an artificial mind are the maps and models of
the external world.  It is one thing to download a map created by
an external mapmaker.  It is quite another thing to explore one's
surroundings with one's senses and construct an internal representation
which is analogically similar to the external world.

An Artificial Sentient Being would be equipped with sensors (vision,
audition, olfaction, tactition), and would be given the goal of
exploring its environment, constructing an internal map or model
of the that environment, and then using that map to navigate safely.

Finally, like Marco Polo, the Artificial Sentient Being would describe
to others, in symbolic language, the contents of its internal map:
it would tell its life story.

I personally would like to see us build an Artificial Sentient Being
who was able to do Science.  That is, it would observe reality and
construct accurate theories (mental models) of the dynamics which
governed external reality.

Suppose we had two such machines, and we set them to explore each
other.  Would each build an accurate internal representation of the
other?  (That is, could a Turing Machine construct a mathematical
model of (another) Turing Machine?)  Would the Sentient Being
recognize the similarity between itself and the Other?  And in seeing
its soul-mate, would it come to know itself for the first time?

Barry Kort
---
				-- Barry Kort
				...ihnp4!houxm!hounx!kort

	A door opens.  You are entering another dementia.
	The dementia of the mind.