Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!enea!kth!draken!tut!santra!news
From: news@santra.UUCP (news)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: elementary AI philosophy
Message-ID: <18464@santra.UUCP>
Date: 27 Dec 88 21:46:59 GMT
Reply-To: ay@hutcs.UUCP (Beta)
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Lines: 27

Here's some elementary AI philosophy (hopefully I won't get hanged for
this).

A very interesting problem for an AI researcher to study is to start
studying what might be the essential element of the human mind, the
something that humans have and which makes them different from
machines.

Christianity offers one answer to the question.  According to the Old
Testament, God created man to be His image; and according to the New
Testament, Apostle Paul "God is love".

I invite the reader to do some elementary philosophy.  Machines, I
would say, don't love in the sense humans do, however sophisticated
their cognitive mechanisms are.  To answer the question whether
animals can be said to love, a better biologist than me is required;
but my intuitive answer is no.

Accepting a new hypothesis can always lead to new results, and I
havent't seen this one in AI textbooks.

It might be a good idea for AI researchers to study the romantic
literature written by women for women (sic).

Antti Ylikoski
Helsinki University of Technology, Lab of Information Processing
Science