Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!markh
From: markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Summary: Does it exist, Virginia?
Message-ID: <16@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>
Date: 20 Dec 88 23:48:57 GMT
References: <484@soleil.UUCP> <88Nov15.170837est.707@neat.ai.toronto.edu> <17847@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <4264@homxc.UUCP> <17@ubc-cs.UUCP>
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Reply-To: markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
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In article <17@ubc-cs.UUCP> morrison@grads.cs.ubc.ca (Rick Morrison) writes:
>In article <4264@homxc.UUCP> marty@homxc.UUCP (M.B.BRILLIANT) writes:
>> ...  Do we know what ``artificial intelligence'' is?  Or are we just talking
>> about something we don't know anything about? ...  Just somebody
>>tell us what the answer is.
>
>The answer is "who cares?" Does anyone in this group actually _do_ AI?

Well, if Natural Language processing counts as AI, the answer is yes.

>I'm beginning to think that the most appropriate definition of AI is
>"a discipline concerned with the uninformed examination of unresolvable 
>philosophical and psychological issues."

I do believe that human intelligence is beyond human comprehension.  The
reason is that the day we learn about our intelligence as it currently
exists, we'll experience a quantum leap in our own intelligence AS A RESULT.
So we'll always be one step behind ourselves.

None of this rules out AI, though ... especially if AI were to be
automated ;-).

Another, related, posting described the impossibility of AI by using the
classic Sentimentalist argument: machines won't be able to recognize a Duck
when it sees one so it could "throw" it a piece of bread out of humanitarian
concern.

The machine's response: "I see no cause for that kind of insult! Really!
Comparing *ME* to a human!"

Signals in our nervous system travel at about 700 MPH (if my memory is 
correct).  Signals in Silicon travel about 1 *MILLION* times faster.
It's not whether AI is possible, no, the question is how long it will be
before the machine's capacity exceeds our own, as it will.

Being scared of the possibility is no excuse for denying its inevitability,
because the machine is our own creation and our own tool, albeit an intelligent
one.  But we don't deify cars because they travel faster than us (well, normal
people don't, at least), so nobody would ever deify a human artifact that
happened to think faster and better than us.

And as for unresolvable philosophical problems such as the one behind Goedel's
Theorem: you may not realise it, but even there there is a tiny crack that may
allow for a resolution.  You see, nobody ever showed that the negation of
the key statement which Goedel used in his theorem is not proveable.  In fact, 
the Number Theory that Goedel looked at may actually be both complete and
consistent if that negation IS proveable within the original theory itself.
What Number Theory would be then is "omega-consistent" ...  in which case you
would have infinite numbers, infinitesimals and the like rammed down your 
throat ... a possibility I savor, and a perfect resolution to the
philosophical dilemma.