Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!sri-unix!sri-spam!ames!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!jack!man!crash!gryphon!tsmith From: tsmith@gryphon.CTS.COM (Tim Smith) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: The Success of AI Message-ID: <1994@gryphon.CTS.COM> Date: Wed, 21-Oct-87 01:35:49 EDT Article-I.D.: gryphon.1994 Posted: Wed Oct 21 01:35:49 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 23-Oct-87 06:39:32 EDT References: <228@snark.UUCP> Reply-To: tsmith@gryphon.CTS.COM (Tim Smith) Organization: Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA Lines: 77 In article <228@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: +==== | In article <1922@gryphon.CTS.COM>, tsmith@gryphon.CTS.COM (Tim Smith) writes: | > Computers do not process natural language very well, they cannot | > translate between languages with acceptable accuracy, they | > cannot prove significant, original mathematics theorems. | | I am in strong agreement with nearly everything else you say in this article, | especially your emphasis on a need for a new paradigm of mind. But you are, | I think, a little too dismissive of some real accomplishments of AI in at | least one of these difficult areas. | | Doug Lenat's Amateur Mathematician program was a theorem prover equipped with | a bunch of heuristics about what is 'mathematically interesting', essentially | methods for grinding out interesting generalizations and combinations of known | theorems. | [...] | | So at least one of your negative assertions is incorrect. +===== OK, I'll accept your word on this (I'm a linguist, not a mathematician). +===== | I think AI has the same negative-definition problem that "natural | philosophy" did when experimental science got off the ground -- that | once people get a handle on some "AI" problem (like, say, playing | master-level chess or automated proof of theorems) there's a tendency | to say "oh, now we understand that; it's *just* computation, it's not | really AI" and write it out of the field (it would be interesting to | explore the hidden vitalist premises behind such thinking). +===== Well, scientific (and philosophical) fields do progress, and there is a normal tendency to discard the old and no longer interesting. But there is an interesting aspect to what you are saying, I believe. Let me try to develop it a bit, using chess as an example. Chess: I am at a disadvantage here in one sense--I don't play the game very well. In my limited understanding of it, it is a very difficult game to play at a high level. It requires years of study, usually starting at a young age, to become a grand master. It requires peculiar abilities of concentration and nervous resources to play chess at a competetive level. Nevertheless, I don't think of chess as being a particularly intellectual game. It seems much more like tennis to me (and I don't play that either). This is not a put-down! I think of chess as being a sedentary sport--a sport for the mind. Now here's the interesting point. If you were to come to me and say-- "Smith, you have a year to develop an automaton that will play some kind of major sport at a championship level, competing against humans. Money is no object, and you can have access to all the world's experts in AI and robotics, but you must design a robot that plays championship X in a year's time. What is X?" I would say, without a moment's hesistation, "tennis". Why? Of all the sports, tennis is the most bounded. It is played within a very restricted area (unlike golf or even baseball), it is a one-against-one sport (unlike football or soccer), the playing surfaces (aside from Wimbledon) are the truest of all the major sports, and it is indubitably the most boring of all the sports to watch (if not to play). A perfect candidate for automation. Chess? It is tennis for the mind. And so a perfect candidate for initial attempts at AI. But if computers have conquered chess (as they seem about to), does this mean that "real" artificial intelligence is not far behind? No, it just means that chess was over-rated as an intellectual exercise! On a scale of 1 to 10, in terms of intellectual effort involved in playing the game, chess seems to rate at about .002. In terms of skill, concentration ability, depth of understanding of the game, etc. it is difficult. But then, so is multiplying two 37 digit numbers in your head difficult. Unless you're an "idiot savant", or a computer! -- Tim Smith INTERNET: tsmith@gryphon.CTS.COM UUCP: {hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, ihnp4, ....}!crash!gryphon!tsmith UUCP: {philabs, trwrb}!cadovax!gryphon!tsmith