Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!maestro!fransvo
From: fransvo@maestro.htsa.aha.nl (Frans van Otten)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Turing Test and Subject Bias
Message-ID: <952@maestro.htsa.aha.nl>
Date: 1 Jun 89 15:25:03 GMT
References: <3018@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1108@hydra.cs.Helsinki.FI>
Reply-To: fransvo@htsa.UUCP (Frans van Otten)
Organization: AHA-TMF (Technical Institute), Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Lines: 42

Kari Grano writes:

>I think that Alain Turing did not want to define what 'intelligence'
>really is (that would indeed be hard), but rather to provide some
>kind of basis for empirical tests, and forget the unfruitful arguing
>about what defines intelligence.  The test, although inaccurate,
>does provide some information about the intelligence of the object
>being tested.
>
>Furthermore, would you say that a drunk person is not intelligent ?
>Or a child ?  Or someone mentally handicapped ?  The question of what
>defines intelligence is and will remain unsolved.

It seems to me that the use of the word "intelligence" is rather
subjective, and the opposite of "dumbness".  It is not an absolute
property of a system or human or animal, at least not when normally
used.  I think that is why it is so hard to define "intelligence".
And a definition based on subjective perceptions like these is
probably not of much use in the field of ai.

But it might be possible to describe a property which I might call
"absolute intelligence".  This could be described by something like
this:

  1. A set of rules, like "if big angry man coming towards me
     then run away";
  2. A machine to apply these rules to input data, resulting
     in output data and/or actions.

Of course, ai languages like prolog use this kind of data
representation, but they don't seem to be as successful as humans.
On the other hand, we humans (at least I) do sometimes call a
program intelligent (or dumb).  This happens mostly when the used
algorithm is a bit complex and/or the result is surprising.  When
I know exactly how the program works, I usually don't call it
intelligent anymore.  What does this mean ?

I appreciate any comments on this random output of my brain.
-- 
Frans van Otten                     |   fransvo@maestro.htsa.aha.nl    or
Algemene Hogeschool Amsterdam       |   fransvo@htsa.uucp              or
Technische en Maritieme Faculteit   |   [[...!]backbone!]htsa!fransvo