Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!gilbert
From: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness
Message-ID: <1099@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 5 May 88 09:37:54 GMT
References: <1029@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <4134@super.upenn.edu> <3200014@uiucdcsm> <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <5100@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland
Lines: 30

In article <5100@pucc.Princeton.EDU> RLWALD@pucc.Princeton.EDU writes:
>    Are you saying that AI research will be stopped because when it ignores
>free will, it is immoral and people will take action against it?
Research IS stopped for ethical reasons, especially in Medicine and
Psychology.  I could envisage pressure on institutions to limit its AI
work to something which squares with our ideals of humanity.  If the
US military were not using technology which was way beyond the
capability of its not-too-bright recruits, then most of the funding
would dry up anyway.  With the Pentagon's reported concentration on
more short-term research, they may no longer be able to indulge their
belief in the possibility of intelligent weaponry.

>    When has a 'doctrine' (which, by the way, is nothing of the sort with
>respect to free will) any such relationship to what is possible?
From this, I can only conclude that your understanding of social
processes is non-existent.  Behaviour is not classified as deviant
because it is impossible, but because it is undesirable.  I know of NO
rational theory of society, so arguments that a computational model of
human behaviour MAY be possible are utterly irrelevant.  This is a
typical academic argument, and as you know, academics have a limited
influence on society.

The question is, do most people WANT a computational model of human
behaviour?  In these days of near 100% public funding of research,
this is no longer a question that can be ducked in the name of
academic freedom.  Everyone is free to study what they want, but public
funding of a distasteful and dubious activity does not follow from
this freedom.   If funding were reduced, AI would join fringe areas such as
astrology, futorology and palmistry.  Public funding and institutional support
for departments implies a legitimacy to AI which is not deserved.