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From: jeff@lorrie.atmos.washington.edu (Jeff L. Bowden)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Message-ID: <JEFF.88Nov29211246@lorrie.atmos.washington.edu>
Date: 30 Nov 88 05:12:46 GMT
References: <1976@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <2717@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <1985@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
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In-reply-to: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk's message of 28 Nov 88 11:25:11 GMT

In article <1985@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes:

>None of your examples would be accepted as anything except sloppy
<language, but acceptable sloppiness given that "Dumb programmer who
>wrote this program" or "Dumb design team who got the functionality of
<this software wrong" are far too long winded.
>
<Part of the consciousness raising of HCI is that programs are never
>dumb, only the programmers and designers who make them inadequate, or
<the design which commercial considerations forced on the designers or
>programmers.
<
>Anyone who talks of computers "understanding" does so:
<
> a) to patronise users whom they don't know how to instruct properly;
< b) because they are AI types.
>

  If someone says something to you and you don't understand is it
	a) Your fault?
	b) God's fault?
	c) Your mother's fault?
	d) The fault of some other thing to which you give
	   credit (blame?) for your existence?

  Certainly it is the fault of the programmer if a program is deficient in
understanding something, but it is certainly not sloppy English to say that
the program does not understand.  It doesn't.  It was not imbued by its
creator with the ability to understand.  Fault has little to do with this.

  It appears to me that Mr. Cockton has an axe to grind with those who assume
that every computer scientist accepts materialism.