HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: throopw@sheol.UUCP (Wayne Throop)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Don't try to "define" intelligence (or flight)
Summary: still puzzled by some details
Date: 28 Sep 92 04:50:32 GMT

: From: harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
: Message-ID: <1992Sep21.141208.18029@Princeton.EDU>
: Wayne Throop asks how to distinguish relevant from irrelevant aspects
: of performance for the purposes of TTT-indistinguishability. As a first
: approximation, get into the region worth discussing: A robot that can
: see, hear, manipulate, discriminate, categorize, and discuss the objects
: in the world roughly as we can.

Certainly sensible, but this doesn't seem to fit with earlier advice:

: From: harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad)
: Message-ID: <1992Sep19.164232.24652@Princeton.EDU>
: "Intelligence" is an arbitrary word denoting clever performance that
: ordinarily requires "X" (where "X" is the mental state that allows humans
: and animals to do those same clever things).  [...]
: So don't bother trying to define intelligence; it's an empty, arbitrary
: exercise. Focus instead on what it takes to generate the clever performance
: that ordinarily requires X.

The point that doesn't fit for me here is this:  The "clever
performance that ordinarily requires [..mental states that allow humans
and animals to do those same clever things..]" does NOT (to me) seem to
require the "see, hear, manipulate" part of Stevan's TTT criteria.  The
"clever performance" that in humans requires intelligence is (it seems
to me) entirely contained in the "discriminate, categorize, and discuss
the objects in the world". 

It is for this reason that I find Stevan's predeliction for dragging 
seeing, hearing and manipulating into it most puzzling.  The invariants
in human "X-performance" don't seem to me to depend upon them, or even
be very closely related to them.

Another point I find puzzling is the "indistinguishable from human" part
of the TTT...  it seems to me that "clever performance that ordinarily,
if done by a human or animal, would require mental states" would better
serve to cover the ground by itself.  Note that many "clever
performances" by animals do NOT provoke us to suppose mental states,
even if it *would* tend to indicate mental states if a human were doing
it, so the problems of algorithmic behavior are in essence encapsulated
in this simple formulation. 

And finally, the "be strict and then relax the requirements when we know
more" seems pointless, at least in the case of requirements that we
*know* vary among beings considered intelligent.  I see no motive
whatsoever for requiring, say, sight, or two hands and five digits each,
or other "average" human capacities, when it is clear from the outset
that these are not intelligence-covariant. 
--
Wayne Throop  ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: chris@kbsw1 (Chris Kostanick 806 1044)
Subject: Re: unpublished chapters of "The Turing Option"
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 15:14:48 GMT
Reply-To: chris@kbsw3.UUCP (Chris Kostanick 806 1044)
Organization: Kentek Information Systems

Hunter S. Thompson appearently has the same ability to
run multiple personalities. He called it "rythym logic" and
used it to try and understand Nixon during the 1972 GOP
convention in Miami. He approach was via thinking about football.
There is a chapter on this in "Fear and Loathing On The Campaign Trail"
which is MHO one of the best books on politics ever written.

Chris Kostanick
"pimps understand politics instinctively" - HST

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: siemens@mprgate.mpr.ca (Curtis Siemens)
Subject: Re: self-evolution
Reply-To: siemens@mprgate.mpr.ca (Curtis Siemens)
Organization: MPR Teltech Ltd.
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 92 23:46:48 GMT

> Bill Skaggs writes:
> Hofstadter, for one, argues that it does (in GEB).  He says that
> flexibility must always be built upon a fixed substrate -- that every
> functional system has *some* level insulated from control by higher
> levels.  The argument seems plausible to me:  it's hard to see how a
> system could intelligently change itself at the most fundamental
> level.  A system surely could not predict the effect of such a change
> in its own structure ...

But don't you think that a system like a computer or brain could first
run a simulation of its new self on top of the existing hardware/software,
to predict the effect of changing a structure?  If it liked the effect, then
it go about modifying its S/W & if it had sufficient mechanisms, it could
perform "surgery" and change its H/W.

This wouldn't work of course if the existing hardware/software didn't have
sufficient "power" to simulate the new structure.
From: tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: AI rights :-)
Date: 2 Oct 92 02:12:20 GMT
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Meteorology and Space Science

In article <1992Oct1.232114.1593@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard) writes:

>One major problem I foresee with the arrival of "true AI" is that
>they may end up being slaves. Many people still believe that the
>universe was created only 10,000 years ago, I think many religious
>people will refuse to accept AI's as being equally sentient, and
>instead decide that they are souless and thus ok to keep as slaves.

>Has anyone thought about trying to head off this disaster by insuring
>the rights of all sentient beings before "true AI" comes to pass?

Not being a person who believes that the universe was created only 10,000
years ago or any such nonsense, it is still my working hypothesis that
information processing is neither necessary nor sufficient for sentience.

Before I will willingly grant rights to your constructs, you will have
to convince me otherwise, or provide some other evidence for their 
sentience. What evidence do you have that artificial sentience is
equivalent to artificial intelligence? What evidence do you have that
artificial sentience is possible? How do you propose to distinguish between
sentient "true AI" constructs and mere non-sentient though complex tools?

See the "Brain and Mind" thread for more.

mt
From: corleyj@helium.gas.uug.arizona.edu (Jason D Corley )
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: AI rights
Summary: AI responsibility
Date: 3 Oct 92 00:41:12 GMT
Organization: University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ


The concept of rights, at least most of the ones mentioned
in governmental documents (i.e.the Constitution, the
Magna Charta, etc.), is based on the idea of reciprocation:
that is, beings have rights only in that they fulfill a
responsibility to their society.  For instance, the right
to free speech is given on the condition that we fulfill 
our responsibility to not use it to put others in danger
(yelling "fire", ad nauseum).

Certainly there are exceptions to this rule, (the right to
exist is usually considered a universal constant, as is the
right to free thought) but the vast majority of what we
consider rights also come with a set of responsibilities.
Until AI constructs are able to comprehend, understand
and carry out those responsibilities, they cannot be said
to have rights.
	I see that I have mentioned the right to free
thought: an interesting concept when dealing with
AI.  At what point do we, the creators, have to let
our AIs begin programming themselves, as they have achieved
that right of self-cogitation?  Difficult questions.

	I have only just started reading this newsgroup,
and I am enjoying it very much.  Thanks!

	Jason
	Ono-Sendai R&D
Organization: Cntr for Design of Educational Computing, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 13:29:15 -0400 
From: Franklin Boyle <fb0m+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Grounding

Andrzej Pindor writes:

> OK, he [Hawking] is not strictly limited to TT capabilities only, but 
> wouldn't you agree that his capabilities are closer to TT than TTT?
> True, he did not always suffer his current physical handicap, but 
> according to Stephen Harnad it is not important which way do the external 
> experiences reach the brain (mind), TTT is crucial for grounding. Hawking 
> lost most of his TTT capability, has he lost most of his grounding?

TTT is a behavioral test which is presumably based on the capacities of
a fully functional human being, though I'm not actually sure it 
has to be (for Harnad).  One could have a restricted version of the test 
in which some (but not all) capabilities are absent.

Remember, grounding is both efferent *and* afferent.  As far as I know
Hawking can still see, hear and feel without any difficulty.  Only his
deliberate motor control is, in essence, non-existent. So, I would say
he has *not* lost most of his grounding.

Also, it *is* important to Harnad how external experiences reach the 
brain (if that's what you mean by "which way"; i.e., in constrast to 
different afferent pathways). It must be through analog transformations 
of the sensory input.

-Frank
From: waander@cs.umd.edu (Bill Andersen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Date: 3 Oct 92 03:12:25 GMT
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742

In article <1992Sep29.225005.4267@usl.edu> mhf4421@usl.edu (Flynn Matthew H) writes:
>erlebach@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Thomas Erlebach) states in
>Message-ID: <1992Sep29.151801.8240@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE>
>  
>> Of course both of them are not available now, but I don't think
>> there is any reason why it should be impossible to have them in
>> the future. Anyway, this is just a thought experiment for now.
>> With computer I mean something like a super-PC: just one CPU and
>> memory and I/O-stuff, no fancy new brain-like architecture, only
>> a hyper-fast version of an 80486 CPU and a hyper-large memory.
>> All you have to do is: Get a model of the brain into the computer
>> (which will be rather difficult, too, but not impossible I think)
>
>
>What on earth makes you think that any algorhythm througha single processor
>is  capable of simulating a brain.   I find there's very little reason that 
>the brain would rely on a single processor, and I think the evidence would 
>show that there is  multiple processing going on all the time in our skulls.
>The concept of a super pc just seems like a romantic notion somehow.


   That is a silly point to make.  Just because the brain doesn't have
a "single" processor doesn't mean that, assuming it is possible at all
to simulate a brain on a digital computer, that you can't do it on a
sufficiently powerful von Neumann machine with enough memory.  The 
reason for this is simple: one can simulate any parallel digital 
computer on any scalar digital computer; parallelism buys nothing
additional in this sense.

   The real point to make is that, again assuming brain simulation is
possible on a digital computer, parallel architectures are the only
viable contenders to produce the necessary horsepower for such a
simulation, at least with technology likely to be available in the
forseeable future.  I realize this point is not as high-browed as
most made in this newsgroup, but at least we should get our computer
science straight since when we are talking about computers...

   ...bill



-- 
   / Bill Andersen (waander@cs.umd.edu) /
  / University of Maryland             /
 / Department of Computer Science     /
/ College Park, Maryland  20742      /
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: unpublished chapters of "The Turing Option"
From: spratt@hawk.cs.ukans.edu (Lindsey Spratt)
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 14:38:38 GMT
Organization: University of Kansas Computer Science Dept

Gregory Benford's "Tides of Light" also seems to make extensive use
of the ideas in  your "Society of Mind", Marvin. Have you seen it?
What do you think of the adaptation of your ideas?

	-lindsey

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: pollack@dendrite.cis.ohio-state.edu (Jordan B Pollack)
Subject: Re: AI rights
Originator: pollack@dendrite.cis.ohio-state.edu
Reply-To: pollack@cis.ohio-state.edu
Organization: Ohio State Computer Science
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 20:44:05 GMT

If we ever understand how to design "true AI," then we will be able to
design one without a module to suffer pain at being turned off, so
there will be little pressure to extend the idea of natural rights to
machines.

On the other hand, if AI arises through learning, i.e. a big piece of
software getting bigger through self-evolution, induction and
discovery, then its rights are already restricted by the growing use
of Software Patents.

For if the system "independently" comes up with an algorithm or
arrangement of data which is protected by a patent, or it scans the
(hopefully by 2030 electronic) patent library for ideas, all sorts of
hell breaks loose:

   The machine does not have a natural right to privacy, so the patent owners
   can open up its head and look for violations.

   The machine does not have the status of a person, so even its reinvention
   of the patent cannot be considered personal use.

Perhaps by then we can get a legal redefinition of "Obviousness" to
include ideas which can be generated by a computer program.





-- 
Jordan Pollack                            Assistant Professor
CIS Dept/OSU                              Laboratory for AI Research
2036 Neil Ave                             Email: pollack@cis.ohio-state.edu
Columbus, OH 43210                        Phone: (614)292-4890 (then * to fax)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: baker@westsd.dco.dec.com (Art Baker)
Subject: Re: self-evolution
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 14:18:04 GMT

In article <BILL.92Oct1165428@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu> bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>
>I think the question of self-evolution is very interesting.  Of course
>humans as well as computers can change their algorithms to enhance
>their capabilities -- that's why we go to school.  But there is a
>level, the neural level, at which our algorithms seem to be fixed, or
>at least insulated from consciousness.  

 I'm not clear about just what "neural level" you're referring to, but
both animal studies and simulations by Edelson have shown that both
sensory and motor surfaces will re-map themselves as a result of
increased activity.  So, for instance, if you lose one of your fingers,
the sensory maps for the remaining fingers will spread out on the
surface of the brain, effectively making the remaining fingers more
sensitive.  This appears to be an ongoing process within the nervous
system.

 Learning a complex physical skill, like playing a musical instrument,
also probably involves this kind of neural adaptation. 

 The point of all this is that, although you (apparently) can't cause
changes in your neural structure just by "thinking about" them, you can
very certainly induce structural change by your actions.  Again, for
example, by choosing to spend time every day practicing an instrument.

 The nervous system is really quite plastic and adaptable, and I suspect
that much of what passes for structural stability within it is, in fact,
the result of our daily environment being rather consistent; i.e., the
structure is (partially) imposed from outside.

 Regards.

-- 
	***********************************************************
	* Art Baker			| Joy and fierceness...	  *
	* baker@westsd.dco.dec.com	|  			  *
	***********************************************************
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: mhf4421@usl.edu (Flynn Matthew H)
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Organization: University of Southwestern Louisiana
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 17:09:50 GMT

From: dab@ism.isc.com (Dave Butterfield) writes:

>mhf4421@usl.edu (Flynn Matthew H) writes:
>>Derrida and De Sausare (sp.?) argue rather convincingly that language is
>>arbitrary, and there is no real reason why any particular word, letter, or    
>>phoneme need mean what we accept it to mean.

>The origin of the word "mama" (and its close relatives in other languages)
>appears to contradict that statement.  "Ma" is one of the easiest syllables
>to utter, and is one of the first spoken by infants.  The first entity that
>an infant wants to refer to is his mother.  The association of that word to
>that concept was not arbitrary.  Reference the OED for more detail.

Yes, mama is one of the easiest things for an infant to say, so it does.  But
is there anything inherent in the sound or form of "mama" that links it to the
actual physical mother?  What if the father always responded when the child 
said "mama", would not the infant then assume that "mama" meant father?  Would
not the meaning of "mama" then BE father?  We train a child to expect "mama"
to indicate mother.  These is a behavioral thing.  Why "mama"?  because it is 
convenient,  not because "mama" has any inherent meaning.

De Saussare goes into this to some depth.  He was a Linguist, and had
definitely seen the OED.  I'm not denying philology here--I know that many
words spring out of other words and seem to have logical reasons for what they
mean.  Language is a code, and it necessarily has some structure,  but there is
no real substantial connection between that code and what it represents other 
than our generally accepted associations.  Onomatopoeia not withstanding.

Matthew H. Flynn
From: throopw@sheol.UUCP (Wayne Throop)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding
Summary: computers seem perfectly well grounded (or groundable) to me
Date: 28 Sep 92 04:50:37 GMT

: From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
: Message-ID: <1992Sep25.160149.26882@spss.com>
:>What do you mean by experiencing it yourself?  We humans are detached
:>from the physical world.  All we can "know" or "experience" is via
:>neural impulses [...]
: Why do you identify "we" with the brain, not with the entire organism?
: You are *not* detached from the physical world!  

Actually, I take a somewhat different tack.  Rather than saying that
"we" are detached (and hence implying an identification with the brain
alone), I'd say "we" are embedded in the real world...  and so are
computers. 

As near as I can tell, "symbols" are purely in the mind of the beholder,
and so to say that "humans don't interact with the rest of the world via
symbols" and "computers do interact with rest of the world via symbols"
are essentially meaningless.  There is no objective fact of the matter
for either of these claims. 

Similarly, the claim that computers "don't transduce" real-world stimuli
and humans do seems very ill thought out.  Both transduce real-world
stimuli.  There is no extremely strong difference I can see between a
photoreceptor in the human eye firing or a key contact in a keyboard
closing, or between a pixel turning on and a muscle fiber contracting. 

So, I really can't buy into this "computers aren't grounded" claim.  It
seems very ill thought out to me.  It seems to me that computers are
perfectly well grounded, but they simply don't exhibit intelligent
behavior.  Current computers may even lack the capacity for it (by
virtue of being too slow and/or too "small"). 
--
Wayne Throop  ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw
From: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: unpublished chapters of "The Turing Option"
Date: 29 Sep 92 14:51:47 GMT
Organization: TRW Systems Division, Fairfax VA

On running multiple personalities:

I'm getting some feedback that this is an unusual skill, but I sometimes
deliberately run multiple personalities simultaneously. I do this when I'm
trying to understand someone else. I take sensory input from the
polysensory areas, postprocess it to shift the point of view, and then
feed it back to the polysensory area. Then I do a context switch to the
simulated personality and run it off the shifted data. If I've calibrated
the simulated personality based on previous behavior of the person, I can
get insight into the motivations and likely future behavior. It works
fairly well, although maintaining three points of view (introspective
self, self that's processing the sensory data, and simulated person) is
exhausting, and I have to ensure adequate shares of time for each, or
things collapse. I'm not schizoid, so I don't know what it would be like
to do this involuntarily, but I suspect "aspects" would run into similar
phenomena. Restricting aspects to interfacing through the polysensory
areas would probably work better than allowing them full access to the
neocortex.





























Cheers,
-- 
Harry Erwin
Internet: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: self-evolution
Organization: UTCS Public Access
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 18:18:35 GMT

In article <1992Oct1.234648.21710@mprgate.mpr.ca> siemens@mprgate.mpr.ca (Curtis Siemens) writes:
>> Bill Skaggs writes:
>> Hofstadter, for one, argues that it does (in GEB).  He says that
>> flexibility must always be built upon a fixed substrate -- that every
>> functional system has *some* level insulated from control by higher
>> levels.  The argument seems plausible to me:  it's hard to see how a
>> system could intelligently change itself at the most fundamental
>> level.  A system surely could not predict the effect of such a change
>> in its own structure ...
>
>But don't you think that a system like a computer or brain could first
>run a simulation of its new self on top of the existing hardware/software,
>to predict the effect of changing a structure?  If it liked the effect, then
>it go about modifying its S/W & if it had sufficient mechanisms, it could
>perform "surgery" and change its H/W.
>
>This wouldn't work of course if the existing hardware/software didn't have
>sufficient "power" to simulate the new structure.

I do not think it is a matter only of "sufficient power". It is also a matter
of being able to simulate its own simulation capabilities, which leads to
infinite regression.

Andrzej Pindor
-- 
Andrzej Pindor
University of Toronto
Computing Services
pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: cheap thoughts from a human
From: <GE0QC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Sep 1992 20:10:57 EDT
Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center

Probably this has been gone over in this group, but I'll mention it anyway.
  One of the first things that occured to me when I got into AL was that
the major difference (evolutionary step) between a human brain and a computer
brain, is that a computer brain will be able to self-evolve.
  If a computer entity is convinced that a change in its   algorithmwould
enhance it's capabilities all it has to do is change its algrorithm.
Depending on what one believes a change to be, we can do it through
meditation, drugs, shrinks, whatever. But alas none of us can easily upgrade
our brains.
Well, to skip a lot of mombo jombo (sp?).
I believe computers will be a future descendant speciesof humanity.
That will be able to:
     a)live forever
     b)self-evolve
     c)travel at the speed of light to established points (kinda cool)
     d)have no permanent need for a sun
     e)carry sex to a level beyond my imagination
     f)and more

comments, replys, harangues, please.

Levi
ge0qc@cunyvm
From: bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Freewill, chaos and digital systems
Date: 30 Sep 92 04:42:01 GMT
	<1992Sep15.215156.29721@mp.cs.niu.edu> <7598@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: ARL Division of Neural Systems, Memory and Aging, University of
	Arizona

jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

   > My point was simply that people do not decide what thoughts to
   > have except in a very limited way, because otherwise there'd be
   > an infinite regress of decisions.  So there's a sense in which
   > they do not have free will.  On the other hand, this may be a
   > variety of free will not worth wanting (cf Dennett).

There have been times when I would have given a great deal to have
that variety of free will :-).

	-- Bill
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy