XPost: rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.science
From: robban@clubtelco.com
On 26/01/2014 7:26 am, Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy wrote:
> JRStern wrote in
> news:1238e9dot92ieomstdc66qkq2g0hs0nqkf@4ax.com:
>
>> On Fri, 24 Jan 2014 15:47:53 -0700, Gutless Umbrella Carrying
>> Sissy wrote:
>>
>>> Your Name wrote in
>>> news:250120141214165689%YourName@YourISP.com:
>>>
>>>> In article , Ryk E. Spoor
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> On 1/24/14 3:13 PM, Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> The point Greg made, that has not been disputed in any way,
>>>>>> is that the definition used to be "do only one thing well,"
>>>>>> until computers could do only one thing really well, and
>>>>>> now the definition has changed.
>>>>>
>>>>> Oh, I would DEFINITELY dispute that. AI was always "A
>>>>> machine that
>>>>> thinks like a human, only maybe better", and the Turing Test
>>>>> (as a general concept -- making one that really works is
>>>>> harder) was always the general idea of how to really measure
>>>>> it. Can it pass for human in realistic circumstances?
>>>>>
>>>>> The fact that the concept is as foggy as our understanding
>>>>> of what
>>>>> intelligence IS is what causes the confusion.
>>>>>
>>>>> The definition of "thinks like" has been refined through the
>>>>> years,
>>>>> yes. And people -- usually laymen -- would put up examples of
>>>>> tasks that "only a true AI could solve!", like chess, but
>>>>> anyone with any skin in the game knew that this wasn't true;
>>>>> enough brute-force would beat any human without any actual
>>>>> intelligence involved. It WAS thought that computers would
>>>>> never HAVE such brute force available and that, therefore,
>>>>> any computer that could do grandmaster chess must be doing
>>>>> something intelligent, but Moore's Law changed that.
>>>>
>>>> "Artificial intelligence" has never been defined as the
>>>> ability to do just one particular thing well, no matter how
>>>> complex that thing may seem to be.
>>>>
>>>> Even ignoring Turing, the true test of "artifical
>>>> intelligence" would require the ability to do many, many, many
>>>> different things, and to be able to learn to do new things.
>>>>
>>> Is driving a car "one thing"? Or is it many, many things, all
>>> performed at the same time? How about "driving and navigating at
>>> the same time, while also mointoring the physical condition of
>>> the vehicle, fuel usage, and driving conditions"? Is that one
>>> thing, or several?
>>>
>>> You can't even come up with an meaningful, objective definition
>>> of "one thing." And you still haven't addressed Greg's point,
>>> that once you do, when computers can do that, the definition
>>> will be changed again, so that computers cannot, by (meta)
>>> definition _ever_ be "intelligent," because the people doing the
>>> defining will simply not stand for it.
>>
>> What you said.
>>
>> But let me rant some along these (familiar) lines.
>>
>> One of the first uses of the term AI was that it was going to
>> take "intelligence" for a computer to juggle multiple threads.
>> Now that is entirely a commonplace, done with a few lines of
>> code.
>>
>> Chess is still on the bubble here, originally it was said to
>> require so much creativity and insight it was unthinkable that a
>> machine could ever do it. Of course such statements showed
>> gross ignorance of mathematics and game theory, or at least a
>> pessimistic view of how fast computers could ever get.
>
> Indeed. Nobody worth taking seriously ever said it was impossible.
>
>> Fifty
>> years later chess grandmasters still go on about how they hate
>> being beaten by a machine that uses just pure search, but if
>> they add a few heuristics it looks so much more "human" and
>> "creative" and that makes it better. Hmm.
>>
>> So maybe there is a tad of truth to the idea that some stuff can
>> be labeled as "requiring intelligence", and then it turns out,
>> "oh, maybe not so much after all." But what it suggests,
>> frighteningly, is that ALL things eventually fall to that
>> process.
>
> There are those who argue that the human brain is, in fact, a
> deterinistic computer. The more we learn about intelligence,
> artificial and otherwise, the more firmly they believe that.
>>
>> I think the "truth" is probably a little more tricky than that
>> and both sides are a little bit right, say you had a program you
>> could put into your PC and it acted just as intelligently as
>> anything else you can communicate with via computer. Maybe it
>> really is as "intelligent" as you, as feeling, and as screwed
>> up. But, um, what then? Good topic for some scifi stories,
>> boatloads of which have already been written. From scifi,
>> truth.
>>
> There are also those who believe that there is more to the human
> brain than the organic equivalent of transistors, and that it is
> not purely deterministic. Some talk about quantum effects, some
> talk about "soul," but notobyd has come up with anything that can
> be measured so far.
>
There has been a lot of work to determine how various chemicals can
affect how and even what we think. We may discover that free will is an
illusion.
--
Robert Bannister - 1940-71 SE England
1972-now W Australia
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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