Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ncar!tank!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!osiris.cso.uiuc.edu!goldfain
From: goldfain@osiris.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Limits of AI
Message-ID: <8300026@osiris.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 31 Oct 88 08:42:00 GMT
References: <1651@ndsuvax.UUCP>
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Nf-From: osiris.cso.uiuc.edu!goldfain    Oct 31 02:42:00 1988


Re: "Can we create a machine more intelligent than ourselves."

Some classic works dealing with this matter:

_Computers and Thought_   Feigenbaum and Feldman, Editors
    McGraw-Hill 1963   (especially Alan Turing's article)

_Computer Power and Human Reason_  Joseph Weizenbaum
    W. H. Freeman and Co. 1972?

Further comments -
1) This is just the kind of topic to get the net shimmering with discussions
   that have low probability of resolution.
2) This has been debated ... in more notes than you can shake a cursor at.
3) This is NOT very analogous to whether one can build a machine that is
   STRONGER than oneself, at least in my interpretation of intelligence.

Notes on a definition of intelligence -
1) As a previous poster noted, we don't have such a definition.  I would add
   that we aren't close to one, and that without one the question is
   unanswerable. 
2) A proper characterization will need to have a "nominal" listing of kinds of
   capabilities underlying any "numeric" measurements of given capabilities.
   To me, the nominal list is far more important than the numeric levels.
3) The notion of greater intelligence *in kind* is much more of a problem to
   imagine than greater speed, or memory capacity, etc.  Imagine, if you will,
   a machine that could formulate a concept that no human could grasp.  "We"
   would never be able to verify that this had happened!  Thus, such a claim
   must forever remain beyond the realm of human science.

                                     - Mark Goldfain   (student at UIUC)