Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!watdcsu!smann
From: smann@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (Shannon Mann - I.S.er)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Limits of AI
Summary: Limits?  What limits?
Keywords: Intelligence
Message-ID: <5221@watdcsu.waterloo.edu>
Date: 30 Oct 88 03:11:03 GMT
References: <1651@ndsuvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: smann@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (Shannon Mann - I.S.er)
Distribution: na
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 43

In article <1651@ndsuvax.UUCP> ncthangi@ndsuvax.UUCP (sam r. thangiah ) writes:
>
>One of the students in my class raised a point that:
>"Man is not capable of producing a machine that is more intelligent than
>oneself".  Is this a valid statement?
>

>Sam R. Thangiah,  North Dakota State University.

It depends what you call _intelligence_.  If you decide that it is 
expertise in a particular field, from the point of view of a non-expert,
the machine is more intelligence.  But, that is a poor definition.

You ask 'can [human]kind build a machine more intelligent than itself?'
Well, we can take a couple of angles to answer this question. 

First, consider that less that fifty years ago, doing surgery on the human
heart was considered impossible.  A transplant would be completely
unthinkable.  Consider now that, not only do we do transplants, we sustain
human life far beyond what was once considered death.  I guess we have 
finally put 'God in[to] the machine'.  (Please excuse my off-coloured pun)

Now consider the argument posed by Dr. Carl Sagan in ch. 2, Genes and 
Brains, of the book _The Dragons of Eden_.  He argues that, at about the 
level of a reptile, the amount of information held within the brain
equals that of the amount of information held within the genes.  After 
reptiles, the amount of information held within the brain exceeds that
of the genes.

Now, of the second argument, we can draw a parallel to the question asked.
Lets rephrase the question:

Can a system containing X amount of information, create a system containing
Y amount of information, where Y exceeds X?  

As Dr. Sagan has presented in his book, the answer is a definitive _YES_.

        -=-
-=- Shannon Mann -=- smann@watdcsu.UWaterloo.ca
        -=-

'I have no brain, and I must think...' - An Omynous
'If I don't think, AM I' - Another Omynous