Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncrlnk!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!aipna!jeff From: jeff@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Message-ID: <408@aipna.ed.ac.uk> Date: 18 Dec 88 01:29:58 GMT References: <484@soleil.UUCP> <1654@hp-sdd.HP.COM> <1908@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <4040a289.9d8d@hi-csc.UUCP> Reply-To: jeff@uk.ac.ed.aipna.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) Organization: Dept. of AI, Edinburgh, UK Lines: 19 In article <4040a289.9d8d@hi-csc.UUCP> harper@hi-csc.UUCP (Paul L. Harper) writes: >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? Where is anyone assuming this? People are (1) trying to see what machines can do, (2) wondering whether they might be able to do sufficiently complex, etc. things so as to be considered intelligent, (3) noticing that computers are pretty general beasts and that so far we haven't found any hard limits that say they must fall short of intelligence, (4) pointing out what they think are mistakes in arguments that AI won't work. Why should no one ever try to make machines that can identify objects in images or perform other new and interesting tasks until they are sure it could be done? Very little AI work is directed at "real intelligence". It's clear that we're very far from that and not clear that it's even possible. But artificial insects, for example, might be another matter.