Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!bbn!rochester!ken
From: ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: The future of AI
Message-ID: <10617@sol.ARPA>
Date: 16 Jun 88 11:28:56 GMT
References: <48.22A3B84F@isishq.UUCP> <4347@killer.UUCP> <672@auvax.UUCP> <534@white.gcm>
Reply-To: ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 42

The scientific method is not merely about finding answers to yes/no
questions.  Yes, the earth is not flat, but then it is not quite a
sphere either.  It is an oblate spheroid, with bumps and depressions
due to local variations in gravity. The point here is that the real
world is much richer than a collection of binary facts can capture.

Those who argue against the possibility of AI on the grounds of that it
reduces man to machines are on shaky ground. Think about those who
fought to retain a heliocentric universe. So maybe man is a collection
of cells but what a wonderful collection, as revealed through biology.
Why do you feel insecure when there is simply no comparison?

Mysticism has nothing to do with it. Certainly there are other modes of
perceiving the world other than the objective one of the scientific
method, as well there should be. Science doesn't claim to know
everything and does not prove there is no God or supernatural
phenomenon, or whatever.  (By the way, if your idea of God is a
superbeing who put together the earth and its inhabitants from a
Meccano set at 4 pm, July 20th 7000 AD, or something like that, perhaps
you should take a less restrictive view of God.) Perhaps, in the
fullness of time, SOME mysteries will receive rational explaination,
but I believe there will always be richer secrets to understand about
the universe. Arguing that AI is not possible because machines cannot
be mystics is the old "machines cannot do X" argument.

I agree with those who rail against the trend to deal with the world in
mechanistic terms. Is AI possible? is not an interesting question
because it is a yes/no question and will be proved one way or another,
assuming we don't blow ourselves up first. The more important question
to ask is: what do we WANT it to be like? Years ago I read a
tongue-in-cheek article in one of those personal computing rags, the
type with Star Trek programs in BASIC, about the log of a burglar alarm
system.  In short, the system identified the intruder as a recidivistic
criminal, received authorization from the central security databank to
terminate the intruder, zapped the criminal with a 10 MW laser then
proceeded to clean the mess. At least I hope it was tongue-in-cheek,
because I find this kind of thinking scary. There are things that are
simply not appropriate to delegate to machines.

These issues, and those surrounding other technologies like gene
splicing bear much discussion before the future is upon us.

	Ken