Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!caip.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!klaatu.rutgers.edu!josh From: josh@klaatu.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Message-ID: Date: 15 Dec 88 16:41:22 GMT References: <484@soleil.UUCP> <1654@hp-sdd.HP.COM> <1908@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <4040a289.9d8d@hi-csc.UUCP> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 37 Paul Harper writes: I am continually amazed at the faith of AI "researchers" (programmers?). I have seen nothing whatsoever from the AI community that indicates there is any hope of producing intelligence by running instructions on computers. Why "continually"? If this is so off-the-wall a pursuit, why does Mr. Harper bother "continually" reading this newsgroup, and worrying about it? Why doesn't he read talk.politics instead, and be continually amazed that there are so many people that believe any of the creeds expounded there? It is an incredible leap of faith, completely unfounded by science, to assume that computers can obtain the human quality we call intelligence. Where is the scientific justification for the assumption? The scientific method has little to say about justification for assumptions. AI is a scientific hypothesis, a theory. AI practitioners are doing experiments, or if you wish, contributing to the big overall experiment, to test the theory. There is an attitude, all too common among business DP types, that "If I can't program it in COBOL, it's worthless." (For science/engineering types, /COBOL/FORTRAN/.) It turns out that there are plenty are reasons to believe that (a) intelligence is possible in computers of sufficient memory and processing power; (b) it will be possible for us to create such intelligent programs after a sufficient investment in software capital; and (c) the knowledge gained in attempting this will be interesting and useful. However, it would be boring and worthless to explain this to Mr. Harper, so I shall not try. Instead I will merely offer him the advice that if AI baffles him, ignore it, and we'll all be better off. --JoSH