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From: spf@moss.ATT.COM
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: The Success of AI
Message-ID: <16239@clyde.ATT.COM>
Date: Thu, 5-Nov-87 14:31:24 EST
Article-I.D.: clyde.16239
Posted: Thu Nov  5 14:31:24 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Nov-87 14:53:49 EST
References: <1922@gryphon.CTS.COM> <131@glenlivet.hci.hw.ac.uk> <137@glenlivet.hci.hw.ac.uk> <287@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> <16240@topaz.rutgers.edu>
Sender: nuucp@clyde.ATT.COM
Reply-To: spf@moss.UUCP (Steve Frysinger)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Whippany NJ
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In article <16240@topaz.rutgers.edu> josh@topaz.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall) writes:
}Actually, it is probably possible to build a system that is more
}complex than any one person can really "understand".  This seems to be
}true of a lot of the systems (legal, economic, etc) at large in the
}world today.  The system is made up of the people each of whom
}understands part of it.  It is conjectured by Minsky that the mind is
}a similar system.  Thus it may be that AI is possible where psychology
}is not (in the same sense that economics is impossible).

Your point here makes a lot of sense, and the analogy to economics (as
a complex human-made system that nobody understands) is excellent.
To take it to its logical conclusion, then, we can decide that perhaps
AI CAN model human intelligence, but we won't understand it when it does!!

Actually, I find this the most appealing view of all that have
appeared so far in this discussion.  There are actually many other
examples of human-inventions beyond our total comprehension (e.g.
we're still learning some of the more subtle reasons why airplanes
fly the way they do, even though that didn't slow down the Wright Bros.
And much of software integration testing (yech, do people really DO
that?) is involved with figuring out what a program we wrote DOES.

Yeah, I like the flow of this...

Steve