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From: AIList-REQUEST@AI.AI.MIT.EDU (AIList Moderator Nick Papadakis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: AIList Digest   V7 #4 [bwk@mitre-bedford.arpa: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness]
Message-ID: <8805250054.AA01017@BLOOM-BEACON.MIT.EDU>
Date: 25 May 88 00:54:43 GMT
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Date: 9 May 88 16:28:40 GMT
From: bwk@mitre-bedford.arpa  (Barry W. Kort)
Reply-to: AIList@AI.AI.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self-Awareness [AIList Digest   V7 #4]

I was gratified to see Marty Brilliant's entry into the discussion.
I certainly agree that an intelligent system must be able to
evolve its knowledge over time, based information supplied partly
by others, and partly by its own direct experience.  Thomas Edison
had a particularly rich and accurate knowledge base because he was
a skeptic:  he verified every piece of scientific knowledge before
accepting it as part of his belief system.  As a result, he was able
to envision devices that actually worked when he built them.

I think Minsky would agree that our values are derived partly from
inheritance, partly from direct experience, and partly from internal
reasoning.  While the state of AI today may be closer to Competent
Systems rather than Expert Systems, I see no reason why the field
of AI cannot someday graduate to AW (Artificial Wisdom), in which an
intelligent system not only knows something useful, it senses that
which is worth knowing.

--Barry Kort

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