Long ago I got to musing about, "How do you define God?". Now I
 tried to do it from measuring the attributes of God, but how
 would you measure them?

 Think about Arthur C. Clarks dictum, "Any sufficiently advanced
 technology is indistinguishable from magic".

 I got to wondering, could you reasonably say, a being so
 superior to us that we cannot even understand it's nature or
 measure it's abilities be reasonably be called a god? If no, why
 not? After all, that seems to be beyond what the measure of the
 ancient gods was. All they had to be was immortal and have some
 powers beyond human. Any being with a life expectancy of a
 thousand years would be immortal as far as anyone of the human
 race could tell.

 Last night I went to the store to pick up a few items we needed.
 On my way back to my car I saw a man carrying a leaking box,
 which turned out to be a case of beer that had broken open and
 spilled glass bottles on the ground. He was carrying the case
 back to the store, I would guess to complain about it breaking
 open.

 One of the bottles was lying on the driveway broken. My first
 thought was, if they don't get someone out here to clean that up
 someone could get a flat tire. Then I speculated on the
 advancement of security monitoring, and video cameras, and that
 before too long they would have a computer monitoring such
 things, and it would be programmed to recognize some images as
 including actions indicating a problem. In this case, an item
 being dropped, and a portion of the contents being left on the
 ground. From that it would deduce a hazard left in the parking
 lot, and automatically dispatch cleanup.

 In turn, that lead to a consideration of artificial
 intelligence. Just where do you draw the line between programmed
 responses and artifical intelligence? If a computer monitor
 noted a customer falling in the parking lot, it could monitor
 that person for indications of injury, and either put a
 responder on alert, or dispatch one just in case. However, if
 that same monitor saw someone lying on the bench at a bus stop
 near the highway passing the store, would it dispatch a
 responder, or just file it as someone sleeping on the bench?

 Next step, if the computer, on a sweep, detected someone lying
 in the driveway why would it not flag that as a person sleeping
 on the driveway, instead of injured? A child might tell you,
 daddy's asleep and he won't wake up, when daddy is dead. It's
 easier to program the computer to identify the difference, a
 person horizontal on the driveway for more than 15 seconds calls
 for a responder. A child learns the difference over years.

 The computer can even be programmed to include the ultimately
 determined causes of phenomena it observes into it's decisions.
 It could even be programmed to use time lapses between observed
 situations and results. If every person who falls but is
 uninjured gets up within 30 seconds, allow a 30 second delay
 before calling a responder. If the person falling clutches his
 chest before or while falling is identified repeatedly as a
 heart attack, or even found to be one in googling that behavior,
 all such cases get an immediate responder dispatch. Noting the
 behavior of the person falling would be part of the programming,
 but the results would be included by the computer.

 Oh, and putting out an arm while falling would mean close
 scrutiny for broken bones, and the resulting actions associated
 with broken bones. Such observations could be shared among
 security computers, thus 'educating' them with what one system
 has learned.

 So, my musing analysis leads to this question, when you reach
 the point where you can't actually tell if a computer's response
 is just a program line, or actual intelligence, can that be
 considered the dividing line between programming and artificial
 intelligence?

 All that from one broken case of beer. Oh and one bottle was
 left on the driveway unbroken. I picked it up because I thought,
 if a car hits that it could get a flat tire.

 Sad that, I don't like beer. Nor does my wife. Truly sad.

BOB KLAHN bob.klahn@sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn

... The best thing about the future is, it comes one day at a time.
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