Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!apple!bionet!agate!helios.ee.lbl.gov!lll-tis!oodis01!uplherc!sp7040!obie!wsccs!dharvey
From: dharvey@wsccs.UUCP (David Harvey)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Limits of AI
Summary: What is intelligence?
Keywords: Intelligence
Message-ID: <769@wsccs.UUCP>
Date: 9 Nov 88 07:24:14 GMT
References: <1651@ndsuvax.UUCP>
Lines: 52

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?
> 
> I really do not know if this has been debated, but it does tell us the limits
> of achievements that can be attained by AI or does it ?
> 
> Sam

Well Sam, I don't want to appear to be rude, but if no one else will
debate me, I will go out of my way to debate many issues myself,
alternating between 2 or more points of view.

First, what is intelligence?  This is not as trivial as you suppose.
Having the dubious privelege of possessing a degree in Psychology I
can candidly say that it is a very difficult thing to deal with.  Just
defining what it is presently is under debate.  Almost all people in
Psychology believe (with reservations)  that the standard IQ tests
do not measure it.  Some cite models that propose different areas of
intelligence.  For example, I can have strong mathematical skills but
be week in areas that require lots of memorization and less problem
solving.  So you can see one argument against it cropping up.  How
can we say a machine does or does not posess intelligence when we have
problems defining the term itself?

Next, supposing the model that our thoughts are nothing more than the
activations of our massively parallel neural networks then there is a
potential for such a system.  This of course comes at you from the
viewpoint of the Empiricists, ala Locke, Berkeley, Hume, et al.  Now
if you start from the framework of the Rationalists like DesCartes or
Leibniz this of course is unacceptable.  But since both philsophical
approaches have problems, perhaps you should try starting with the
foundation of Kant or Nietzsche which will leave you with the helpless
feeling that philosophy is of no help either.  Posessing 35 hours of
the wonderful stuff I can safely say that it is fun to play with, but
in the end you are locked into many beliefs that you can find no safe
foundation for.

Perhaps the safest thing that could be said is that man may not be able
(notice the probablistic way I phrased it) to purposely build such a
machine.  However, you are ruling out random chance in saying this.
I am sure you are well aware that the discovery of antibiotics was due
to the mistake of leaving windows open, thus allowing spores to come
through and 'corrupt' the developing cultures.  At present it may be
even safer to say that we are limited by our technology.  By this I
mean that we can't develop the massively parallel circuits on the
same scale as our brains.

But the only thing you can know for sure is that you can't know
anything for sure!?