Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!gilbert From: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Me and Karl Kluge (no flames, no insults, no abuse) Message-ID: <1342@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Date: 10 Jun 88 14:42:15 GMT References: <1792@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1312@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <43@aipna.ed.ac.uk> Reply-To: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland Lines: 57 In article <43@aipna.ed.ac.uk> rjc@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) writes: >In <1312@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>, gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes >> work other than SOAR and ACT* where the Task Domain has been formally >> studied before the computer implementation? >Natural language processing. Much ( by no means all ) builds on the work >of some school of linguistics. and ignores most of the work beyond syntax :-) Stick to the computable, not the imponderable. Hmm pragmatics. I know there is AI work on pragmtics, but I don't know if a non-computational linguist working on semantics and pragmatics would call it advanced research work. >One stands on the shoulders of giants. Nobody has time to research >their subject from the ground up. But what when there is no ground? Then what? Hack first or study? Take intelligent user interfaces, hacking first well before any study of what problems real users on real tasks in real applications face (exception Interllisp-D interface, but this was an end-user project!). >According to your earlier postings, if ( strong ) AI was successful it >would tell us that we have no free will, or at least that we can not assume >we have it. I don't agree with this but it is _your_ argument and something >which a computer program could tell us. Agreed. Anything ELSE though that may be useful? (I accept that proof of our logical (worse than physical) determinism would be a revelation) >What do the theories of physics tell us that we couldn't find out by >studying objects. Nothing, but as these theories are based on the study of objects, we know that if we were to repeat the study, we would confirm the theories. Strong AI on the other hand conducts NO study of people, and thus if we studied people in an area colonised at present by hackers only, then we have no reason to believe that we would confirm the model in the hacker's mind. There is no similarity at all between the theories of physics and computational models of human behaviour, it just so happens that some (like ACT*) do have an empirical input. The problem with strong AI is that you don't have to have this input. No one would dare call something a theory in physics which was based solely on one individual's introspection constrained only by their progamming ability. In AI, it seems acceptable (Schank's work for example, can anyone give me references to the substantive critiques from within AI, I know of ones by linguists). >> The proper object of the study of humanity is humans, not machines >Well, there go all the physical sciences, botany, music, mathematics . . . And there goes your parser too. "of humanity" attaches to "the study". Your list is not such a study, it is a study of the natural world and some human artifacts (music, mathematics). These are not studies of people, OK, and they thus tell us nothing essential about ourselves, except that we can make music and maths, and that we can find structures and properties for these artifacts. A study of artifacts, cognitive, aesthetic or otherwise, is not necessarily a study of humanity. The latter will embrace all artifacts, but not as objects in themselves, but for their possible meanings. -- Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science, The University, Glasgow gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs !ukc!glasgow!gilbert The proper object of the study of humanity is humans, not machines