From: burt@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca (Burt Voorhees)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.ai.neural-nets,comp.ai.philosophy,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Human intelligence vs. Machine intelligence
Date: 6 Oct 92 19:01:49 GMT
Article-I.D.: aupair.burt.718398109
Followup-To: comp.ai

>>In article <BvM75v.AEF@eis.calstate.edu> wstein@eis.calstate.edu (William K. 
S
tein) writes:
>>>rob@apache.dtcc.edu (Rob Jarman) writes:
>>>> I'm looking for information or references on human intelligence vs.
>>>> machine intelligence for a research paper. Could any of you help?

*>>  Read Penrose's,  "The Emporer's New Mind".  All the rest is nonesense.

  Not all of the rest, but much of it.

>>>In "The Mind's I" by Hofstadter and Dennet you will find many
>>interesting essays on this topic, including Turing's famous "Computing
>>Machinery and Intelligence" paper, one of the first, and still one of
>>the best, ever written on this topic. You will find a number of papers
<>written by both experts in artificial intelligence, and serious
>>critics of aritificla intelligence, in "Mind Design" by John
>>Haugeland.

  As long as you take the rather dumb remarks which Hofstader (in particular)
makes on the various papers they publish with a shaker of salt. .  (His 
comments on the excellent
paper "On Having No Head" are particularly stupid!)

>>Penrose, although a famous physicist, can't be counted as an expert in
<>this field.

  Like the 300 lb gorilla, Penrose can be counted an expert in whatever
field he chooses to put his mind to.

>>His entertaining and otherwise instructive book unfortunately suffers
>>from not being very well informed about machine intelligence. He
>>suggests that current machine intelligence research programmes are
>>doomed to failure because human cognition depends crucially on the use
>>of an as yet undiscovered quantum-physical principle that enables the
>>brain to utilise a kind of intelligently directed collapse of
>>probability functions to escape the combinatorial explosion of
>>possibilities involved in problem solving. He offers independent
>>support for the existence of such an effect by citing some of his own
>>research work on crystallization, in which he drew the conclusion that
>>there was no other explanation possible of the observed effects than
>>some kind of sub-atomic problem solving effect. Given the existence of
>>such an effect, it was therefore possible that the architecture of the
>>brain made use of it.

  Actually, Penrose gives much better arguments against machine intelligence
than this.  The Godel argument, for example...  He is very clear that he
is suggesting the quantum principle only as a possible way of explaining
how human cognition might work.  Emphasis on the might; and that it does
not alter his arguments against machine intelligence if this explanation
turns out to be wrong.

>>Alas for Penrose, the fate which so often befalls those who argue on
>>the basis of failure of the imagination struck rather quickly. Not
>>long after the publication of his book Scientific American published
>>an article by some scientists with rather more fertile imaginations
>>than Penrose, who provided an explanation for the crystallisation
>>observations without requiring any new physical effects. This leaves
>>Penrose's explanation of human intelligence rather vulnerable to
>>Occam's razor.

>>An indication of the status of Penrose's critique of artificial
>>intelligence is that -- apart from reviews at the time of publication
>>-- nobody in the field is bothering to refute it, whereas the
>>criticisms of such people as Searle and Dreyfus (which are covered in
>>the books I cited) have spawned more books and papers than you could
>>carry.
>>--
>>Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
>>Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
>>5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205

  More likely, nobody in the AI community can refute them.
  What seems to be the case in this debate is that people on either side
are really arguing from hidden metaphysical assumptions and nobody (except
for the occasional person like Terry Winograd) is going to change sides
no matter what.  In terms of a research paper this gives one the opportunity
to investigate such things as the nature of consciousness, the various
versions of mathematics (e.g., Platonism, formalism, etc: most of the strong
AI people are formalists, their opponents are often Platonists), and etc.

burt voorhees
Faculty of Science
Athabasca University
burt@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca