From: ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon)
Subject: Re: Drawing the entity/environment boundary
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access BBS: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 20:23:31 GMT


In article <C0G3Kv.A6o@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> ,
pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:

>> 
>>>You are wrong. There are many programs nowadays which are so complicated
>>>that the programmers who wrote them have problems understanding the 
>>>program's overall behavior in many circumstances.  
>> 
>I HATE it when people say I'm wrong. 
>> 
>Sorry, sorry, sorry. Next time I'll be more considerate. 

No, no, it's me that's sorry.  I forgot the add the smiley face.  I wasn't
really ready to start stalking you.  I meant HATE as in, "Don't you just
HATE it when people say you're wrong?"

I think most of our disagreements voiced in your post can be attributed to
such miscommunication.

>>Ok, I'll admit that a creation of mind can produce unpredictable results 
>>i.e. a random number generator. 
>> 
>>However, it seems to me that one of a programmer's main jobs is to bring 
>>the program's unpredictability under control, to get it to do something 
>>like what he had in mind before he started coding. 
>> 
>I am not talking about randomness or undesirable unpredictability. A
>programmer specifies rules and perhaps a goal, but in complex
>circumstances the program may find a route which would not occur to the
>programmer. Some time ago I have read, for example (possibly in Scientific
>American), about a master chess program which would make moves totally
>puzzling to its creators (including a chess master), who were convinced
>that there must be a bug in  the program, since the move seemed very
>stupid to them. After a lengthy analysis it turned out that the move was
>the best under circumstances, but so untypical that even the chess master
>would not think of it - the program played better chess than its creators
>and not because of the speed of the computer. 

I'll concede computer programs can be heuristic, but I still say they are
an EXTENSION of the programmer (not a duplicate).  Until such time as
computers can break loose and take over their own development (software and
hardware) and manufacture, I say there's a human in the loop.

>>I'll grant there's an interactive process, a compromise between what the 
>>programmer originally had in mind and what he must settle for.  In fact, 
>>sometimes there is a serendipitous fortuitous improvement over the
>> original expectation.   
>> 
>I do not think my example qualifies under 'a serendipitous fortuitous  
>improvement'. For me it is closer to a case of a student applying rules 
>he/she learned from a teacher in ways which would not occur to the
>teacher. 

I was thinking of your first example when I made that statement, the game
of Life.  I think the richness of the patterns produced by the program was
a happy coincidence, but the basic idea of life-like pattern development
was probably instrumental in the development of the program.

I guess I have the same view of your chess example.  Obviously the program
was designed to be able to plot moves "intelligently" instead of just using
a look up table.  If some of the machine's creations were surprising to the
inventors, I say it's a case of unpredictability.  If the surprising moves
were of unexpectedly excellent quality, then we're talking serendipity.

This doesn't alter the fact that the chess playing program is an artifact,
and that humans had a strong hand in shaping it's characteristics.  The
program would cease to be an artifact (in my view) if it self-developed to
the point where it bore little resemblance to the original human creation.

>>I'll even go so far as to say a program must have a certain amount of 
>>unpredictability to be thought of as intelligent.   
>> 
>>Nonetheless I maintain that creations of man, the essence of the "A" in
>>AI, must yield to the control of it's creator to be considered truly 
>>artificial.  Should the entity gain autonomy as in Gibson's Wintermute, I
>>think it has taken on a quality that makes it something more than
>>artificial. 
>>
>Why? If gaining autonomy was a result (maybe unexpected) of rules built in
>by the creator, when the AI encountered certain circumstances, how is it 
>different from the example I gave above? 

>>>And to give another, but a very telling example: Did John Conway, when
>>>he invented the Game of Life, had any idea of the richness of structure
>>> his simple rules would lead to?  
>> 
>>I suspect he had some idea, or some hope, certainly some curiosity about 
>>what the thing might do.  Otherwise why invent it? 
>> 
>He certainly had curiosity about what the thing might do. Are you saying
>that every pattern produced by the Game of Life is an extension of John
>Conway's ingenuity? He had some goal in mind but his creation is producing
>results which he certainly did not imagine. The same may be true of  
>a creator of an AI - gaining autonomy would be such an unexpected thing
>and even more its autonomous behavior. Why would it invalidate the letter
>'A'? 

It's a matter of degree.  I think we're just arguing over semantics here.
If you like, use other terms to describe the distinction between man-made
and self-made.  I say Life and chess playing programs are minimally
autonomous and are definitely man made.

This whole argument stems from my pronouncement to Mark Rosenfelder to the
effect that if we think computer/algorithm explains AI better than computer
alone, the computer/algorithm/programmer can explain AI even better.  My
point here is that AI is a creation of man, and we must keep in mind that
it's being developed to serve one or another of man's needs.

If the need being served is to model the underlying semantics of human
speech, then I agree there must be some "grounding" of the semantic model
with the corresponding human concepts.  

I don't think that AI should be limited to serving this one need. I think
that there are many potential applications of AI that don't use speech at
all.  Requiring such AIs to pass a Turing test or take sides in the Chinese
room debate is pointless.


--
Ken Easlon                | "...somebody spoke and I went into a dream..."
ken@holonet.net           |    -Paul McCartney
Pleasantly Unaffiliated   |

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy