Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!iuvax!ndcheg!uceng!dmocsny
From: dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Robots & free will (was Re: The limitations of logic)
Summary: On learning warfare
Keywords: Choosing thoughts.
Message-ID: <539@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: 24 Dec 88 19:37:13 GMT
References: <3328@sdsu.UUCP> <43228@linus.UUCP>
Organization: Univ. of Cincinnati, College of Engg.
Lines: 35

In article <43228@linus.UUCP>, bwk@mbunix.mitre.org (Barry W. Kort) writes:
> In article <3328@sdsu.UUCP> caasi@sdsu.UUCP (Richard Caasi) comments
>  > Do we really want this?  Then it wouldn't be long before the robot 
>  > becomes aware of inequities between robots and humans and starts
>  > contemplating the violent overthrow of the human race :-)
> And from whom would it learn the art of warfare?  (No smiley.)

It would wander through the library one day and happen upon a work
of Sun Tzu. (Smiley.)

Seriously, do we have any reasonable hope of creating intelligent
machines that will not duplicate our militarism? That is, even if
we manage to avoid infecting their impressionable little classifier
systems with our own approaches to resolving conflicts, might they
not eventually develop along similar lines?

While humans have taken intra-species conflict and slaughter to
incomprehensible extremes, such behavior is not entirely without
precedent in the animal kingdom. Is such conflict a product of
"intelligence?" That is, as a species becomes more "intelligent,"
does its capacity and predilection for mayhem increase? If that is
true, our mechanical progeny may make us look like amateurs.

My personal, absurdly oversimplified hunch is that warfare is a
societal manifestation of the aggression that results from the action
of male sex hormones on the steroid receptors in the brain.  (Try to
imagine a militaristic society consisting entirely of women and
eunuchs. I don't think socialization accounts for everything.) Since
we have no need to model machine replication after our own,
intelligent machines might also have a crack at being more reasonable
than we can (yet) be.

Cheers/2,

Dan Mocsny