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Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!oliveb!felix!dhw68k!feedme!doug
From: doug@feedme.UUCP (Doug Salot)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Keywords: TAUTOLOGY ALERT!
Message-ID: <151@feedme.UUCP>
Date: 21 Nov 88 00:45:53 GMT
References: <484@soleil.UUCP> <1654@hp-sdd.HP.COM> <1908@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Reply-To: doug@feedme.UUCP (Doug Salot)
Organization: Feedme Microsystems, Orange County, CA
Lines: 31

Gilbert Cockton writes:
>Intelligence arises through socialisation.

So do other diseases, but that doesn't mean it's the only way to get
sick.  The Eskimos have lots of words to distinguish between various
types of snow; would somebody from sci.lang care to give us a few more
words for intelligence?

Culturation is one contributing factor to our peculiar brand of
intelligence.  Our particular set of sensory detectors and motor
actuators is another.  Neurophysiological constraints and mechanisms
is yet another.  The chemical makeup of the earth is one.  The physics
of the universe plays a role.  So!?  Is our definition of intelligence
really so limited as to exclude all other domains?

Machines will exhibit the salient properties of human intelligence.
A fun book to read is Braitenberg's "Vehicles: Experiments in
Synthetic Psychology."  Another is Edelman's "Neural Darwinism."
Bury Descartes already.  Connectionist modeling and neurobiological
research will bear fruit; why fight it?

We should already be starting on the other hard task: creating
robust, self-organizing, self-motive, self-sustaining, self-replicating
machines.  Artificial Intelligence will look like a cake-walk compared
to Artificial Life.  Now, leave me alone while I wire-wrap this damn
frog.


-- 
Doug Salot || doug@feedme.UUCP || ...{zardoz,dhw68k}!feedme!doug
                    "vox populi, vox canis"