Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!ken
From: ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: The future of AI
Message-ID: <10526@sol.ARPA>
Date: 13 Jun 88 08:10:43 GMT
References: <53.22AB6402@isishq.UUCP> <4441@killer.UUCP>
Reply-To: ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 31

A couple of posters have pointed out that machine intelligence may be
quite different from human intelligence. I fully agree with the
possibility but would like to add that we didn't rigously define the
word "intelligence" (and may not be able to reach agreement on this).
So while you may be thinking of smart news reading machines, I may be
thinking of androids.

Certainly machine intelligence may not need to emulate human thought,
just as jet planes work on a different principle from bird flight. But
let me reverse the analogy and say both the plane and the bird have to
obey the laws of aerodynamics. Perhaps we will discover that the kind
intelligence that develops is is partly governed by (goeswith) the
environment. So a Canopean being may have different, maybe even
incomprehensible ways of thinking from us. Already we have problems
with cross-culture understanding.  So maybe a electronic intelligence
that inhabits "imaginary" worlds of information may be comprehensible
to only similar beings. But I think machines that have to work closely
with humans may (have to) take on human characteristics and
weaknesses.

The idea of the indefinite perfectability of humans is an older idea
than AI. How much better a place the world would be, we think, if
everybody was a perfect reasoning being.  There would be no human
foibles to cause wars, etc. We think that with AI perhaps we can create
machines that would embody pure intelligence and no faults.  I think
that for ourselves and our creations, both assets and liabilities will
spring from the same source.

Sounds like I should be posting to rec.sci-fi instead. :-)

	Ken