Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!mephisto!mcnc!rti!ntpdvp1!sandyz
From: sandyz@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Sandy Zinn)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Away with words, on with action...
Summary: attributes of intelligence are attributes of intelligence
Message-ID: <344@ntpdvp1.UUCP>
Date: 6 Mar 90 23:56:24 GMT
Organization: Northern Telecom DMS-10 Div., Raleigh, NC
Lines: 144


 (Subrata Sircar) writes:

> >Furthermore, I believe that the fruits of this
> >pursuit have value for the human species regardless of whether or not 
> >we can emulate human thinking/behavior.

Is there a human pursuit without value?  This is a deceptively simple
question, but if you consider feedback as an important attribute, and
you consider that any pursuit provides some sort of feedback, then...
 
 (Paul Steven Mccarthy) writes:
> >An "intelligent" machine must be able to:
> >    [ LIST OF ATTRIBUTES FROM SIRCAR's POSTING including: ]
> >        - Recognize the affects of its actions on its
> >	  environment.  (Feedback)
> >
> Feedback is, of course, key to the learning process, and this is one of my
> main tests of intelligence.
 
Feedback is absolutely necessary for learning, but it is a very broad
concept, which includes all kinds of information processing beyond the
"effects of actions" mentioned.  Feedback mechanisms exist in unicellular
animals.  It is therefore not suitable as a "main test" -- unless you are
willing to confer intelligence to any organic entity, which might not
be a bad idea, considering the trouble our isolationist/supremist
stance vis-a-vis our environment (i.e. anthropocentrism) has gotten us
into.

> >        - Recognize itself as a distinguishable element
> >          of its environment.  (Self awareness)
> 
> I would argue that this is not necessarily the case. There are religions which
> preach that every human is part of some cosmic force, and that we are all one
> (in various senses); does this mean that adherents to those religions are
> not intelligent?

Self-awareness usually denotes some form of self-representation, i.e., 
the capacity to have knowledge ABOUT oneself, or a higher level symbol
of the relationship between the entity and its context, which is
satisfied by the concept "part of some cosmic force".

> In fact, not recognizing that oneself is part and parcel of
> the environment is unintelligent; man does this by refusing to see the damage
> oil spills, strip mining, etc does to ecology.  Not attaching a special value
> to oneself as opposed to everything else is rare in a human, but not unknown.
 
Obviously, humans have the capacity for awareness of themselves as
entities-in-an-environment; just as obviously, this capacity is only
poorly used.  Are we unintelligent?  Often.

> >	 [ The information/pattern recognition & processing "problems" ]
> 
> Here's the kicker.  I call this the word jumble problem.  If you give a human
> a bunch of letters in random order, and ask him to form words from that set
> of letters, he will NOT arrange them in every possible configuration; he will
> tend to only look at arrangements which "look" right.

This is pure Information Theory.  (A good introduction, if you're 
interested, is Jeremy Campbell's _Grammatical Man_.)  Again, pattern
recognition etc. occurs throughout the evolutionary tree.  Could we
even say that the half of a DNA molecule, in serving as a template for
the creation of the missing half, is a phenomenon of pattern recognition
& processing??  As for reasoning, when does it stop being "mechanical-
processing-according-to-rules" (which rats can do) and start being what
we think of Socrates as doing?

> >        - Occasionally abandon formal reasoning methods to 
> >	  simply explore patterns in the information at its
> >	  disposal.  (Dreams? Creativity?)

Gee, this is very telling.  We only OCCASIONALLY abandon formal reasoning
methods?  What about the possibility that reasoning is a complex process
which automatically involves play & exploration of patterns four levels
under our awareness?  Consider that dreams and creativity may be Special
Cases of information-processing phenomena which permeate organic life.
Exploring patterns?  What are chromosomes doing when they mutate?  How
would you specify a difference, and what does it mean that you wish to
do so?

> Creativity can be modeled as the act of forming hypothesis and applying the 
> various reasoning methods to them.  I think what you are getting at here is
> doing so to no particular purpose i.e. "for fun".

This simplifies an awesome process to a fairly crude recipe.  I can't
buy the use of "reasoning methods" in this context.  For one thing, it
connotes a conscious deliberation which is not necessarily a feature
of creativity.

I am amused at your equation of "fun" with "having no particular purpose".
What about the professor who does research all day but considers that
she is having fun because her work is exciting?  Your definition of fun
exposes the heart of a common American myth which developed as a reaction
to the Puritan work ethic:  nothing which you HAVE to do can be fun.

Since humans are teleological, highly purposive, by their very nature,
your definition ends up as a syllogism which says we can never have
any fun, because all of our activities have some particular purpose.
Even daydreaming or being silly has a purpose.  Of course, there are
all different kinds of purposes, and thus all different kinds of
human meanings.  If you talk about "higher purposes" or the "meaning
of Life", then sure, there are lots of activities which SEEM to have
no direct connection to those.  Again, how do you differentiate, not
only "every-day" purposes from, say, philosophical purposes, but how
do you differentiate the purposive behavior of a bird's nest-building 
from a human's birdhouse building -- without using the word "instinct",
which doesn't really explain a whole lot (Gregory Bateson).

> >(Just your average, opinionated American S.O.B.)

Well, an average American S.O.B. could label me as being nit-picky at
this point, without being too wrong.  After all, I came along into
this nice rambling discussion of tests for intelligence and started
splitting hairs.  But this is just my point:  what look like hairs
at one level become complex braids at another level, and become big
damn cables the size of rivers when you get close enough to actually
write computer models of this stuff.  All the AI people are swimming
as strong as they can in these rivers and few of them can get their
heads up high enough above water to even see anyone else's head,
much less get the whole picture.  We're plunging into the substrate
of life itself, not just intelligence, because the processes which
enable us to call ourselves _Homo sapiens_ are the same processes
which created the first rotifer or amoeba.

    "We have not yet found the dot so small it is uncreated,
    as it were, like a metal blank, or merely roughed in --
    and we never shall.  We go down landscape after mobile,
    sculpture after collage, down to molecular structures
    like a mob dance in Brueghel, down to atoms airy and
    balanced as a canvas by Klee, down to atomic particles,
    the heart of the matter, as spirited and wild as any
    El Greco saints."   --   Annie Dillard

So am I against AI?  Hell, no.  What a trip!  But a list of the
attributes of intelligence is simply a list of the attributes
of intelligence.  AI is a study of complexity itself.  We've got
our fingers in a pie that includes us inside it, and even if we
can reproduce that pie we still won't know what it means or even
how exactly we did it.  But like I said, way back at the beginning,
all human pursuits have value:  AI provides one helluva feedback.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @
    Sandra Zinn         |   "The squirming facts
                        |      exceed the squamous mind"
    (std disclaimer)    |         -- Wallace Stevens