Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!haven!uflorida!ukma!cwjcc!hal!nic.MR.NET!shamash!nis!ems!datapg!sewilco
From: sewilco@datapg.MN.ORG (Scot E Wilcoxon)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Limits of AI
Message-ID: <2211@datapg.MN.ORG>
Date: 31 Oct 88 05:32:35 GMT
Article-I.D.: datapg.2211
References: <1651@ndsuvax.UUCP> <4167@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: sewilco@datapg.MN.ORG (Scot E Wilcoxon)
Followup-To: comp.ai
Organization: Data Progress, Minneapolis, MN
Lines: 24

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?

How about substituting for "Man" one of the following: monkey, mammal, reptile.
Life, and thus evolution, is merely random exceptions to entropy.  Man is
certainly capable of doing better than chance.

Or, in the case of machine intelligence, Man can set up machines which mutate
their "methods of reasoning" very quickly and thus start the same actions which
gave Man its intelligence.  Thus producing a machine which is "more" intelligent
than oneself, even if Man can not understand its functioning.  The answer is
"Yes", although I don't wish to allocate that much hardware to the problem.

By "methods of reasoning" I refer to the methods of processing input and
producting an output.  Each of the major fields of research in AI tends
to have differing methods, each of which can be combined with the others.
Various combinations will of course have differing levels of success with
differing problems.  But then, the problem was painted with a broad brush
on the side of a very large barn.
-- 
Scot E. Wilcoxon  sewilco@DataPg.MN.ORG    {amdahl|hpda}!bungia!datapg!sewilco
Data Progress 	 UNIX masts & rigging  +1 612-825-2607
	I'm just reversing entropy while waiting for the Big Crunch.