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From: channic@uiucdcsm.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: The future of AI - my opinion
Message-ID: <3200009@uiucdcsm>
Date: 13 Apr 88 03:20:00 GMT
References: <2979@sfsup.UUCP>
Lines: 34
Nf-ID: #R:sfsup.UUCP:2979:uiucdcsm:3200009:000:1849
Nf-From: uiucdcsm.cs.uiuc.edu!channic    Apr 12 21:20:00 1988


In article <1348@hubcap.UUCP>, mrspock@hubcap.UUCP (Steve Benz) writes:
 
>  In fact, I agree with it.  I think that in order for a machine to be
>convincing as a human, it would need to have the bad qualities of a human
>as well as the good ones, i.e.  it would have to be occasionally stupid,
>arrogant, ignorant, etc.&soforth.
>
>  So, who needs that?  Who is going to sit down and (intentionally)
>write a program that has the capacity to be stupid, arrogant, or ignorant?
 
Another way of expressing the apparent necessity for bad qualities "for a
machine to be convincing as a human" is to say that free will is fundamental
to human intelligence.  I believe this is why the reaction to any "breakthrough"
in intelligent machine behavior is always "but its not REALLY intelligent,
it was just programmed to do that."  Choosing among alternative problem
solutions is an entirely different matter than justifying or explaining
an apparently intelligent solution.  In complex problems of politics, economics,
computer science, and I would even venture to say physics, there are no right
or wrong answers, only opinions (which are choices) which are judged as such
on the basis of creativity and how much it agrees with the choices of those
considered expert in the field.  I think AI by and large ignores
the issue of free will as well as other long standing philoshical problems
(such as the mind/brain problem) which lie at the crux of developing machine
intelligence.  Of course there is not much grant money available for addressing
old philosphy.  This view are jaded, I admit, but five years of experience in
the field has led me to believe that AI is not the endeavor to make machines
that think, but rather the endeavor to make people think that machines can
think.


tom channic
uiucdcs.uiuc.dcs.edu
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