From: ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon)
Subject: Re: Testing AIs
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access BBS: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 06:09:49 GMT


In article <1993Jan8.231521.27033@mp.cs.niu.edu> ,
rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:

>In article <C0HLno.1Hu@iat.holonet.net> ken@iat.holonet.net,
>(Ken Easlon) writes: 
 
>>I suspect that it's going to be very difficult to separate what we 
>>generally call intelligence from the set of qualities that we apply to 
>>humans. 
>> 
>>Even if we say an animal is intelligent, I think to some extent we are 
>>anthropomorphisizing the poor best. 

>When I say an animal is intelligent, I don't believe I am 
>anthropomorphizing.  But, in your statement, you do reveal that you are 
>homocentrizing your idea of what constitutes intelligence. 

Oh my goodness, I've said something disagreeable.  I'm going to have to
resort to serious philosophizing to straighten things out.  A philosophical
technique that works well for me (as stated in numerous posts) is to adopt
an extreme egocentric point of view which allows no reality outside of
appearances, and then grant "reality" to a minimum number of conceptions or
perceptions to solve the philosophical problem.

Insert standard minimal reality grants.

     Easlon principle #___, emotions are indicators of what kinds of
     reality the mind and body are geared up to deal with.  

     Subjective observation, emotional state: anxiety.  

     Analytical tack, compose and develop conceptual structure which rings
     "true" in current emotional state.

I perceive the current anxiety to have resulted from receipt of Neil's
post.  I hereby grant reality to Neil, as that's the easiest way to explain
the anxiety.  It would be unintelligent of me to get anxious about the
opinion of someone who doesn't exist.

Neil infers that he knows intelligent animals.  I assume Neil has observed
qualities in animals that he considers intelligent but not exclusively
human-like.  

Insert additional standard reality grant.

     My argument here is that our minds fall easily into habit patterns
     that were formed when we were very young.  In this phase of
     development, many of us lived in environments where people were the
     most important entities around, and in later life we tend to use the
     same human relating skills to deal with non human entities.

I think it's safe to say that the animals of Neil's acquaintance probably
can't do well on the Stanford-Binet, so he's probably not predicting any
degree of academic success for his furry friends.

I would hazard a guess that Neil believes animals to be intelligent if they
function well in their own way.  Unfortunately, I don't have any idea which
animal Neil is talking about, probably a mammal, maybe a reptile, probably
not a worm, less likely a bacterium.  It seems to me that Neil probably
would rate some animals more intelligent than others, though from his
statement he may have doubts about humans being the most intelligent
creatures on the planet.

Should I grant reality to Neil's intelligent non-human acquaintances?  I
don't think it would relieve any anxiety at the present time.  Perhaps if
Neil explains his statement in more detail I'll give it some consideration.

>>If it passes the Turing test, it seems human-like from one perspective.  
>>But if we get inside the program we see that it isn't composing sentences
>>the way we compose sentences, so it's not grounded. 
 
>Not necessarily true.  We don't yet know enough about how humans compose 
>sentences.  But when we do, we can start programming our machines to do 
>it the same way. 

Uh oh, another blast of anxiety.  Neil is beginning to get on my nerves.  
What do you mean "we" white man?  This human knows exactly how he composes
sentences.  I can't program a machine to do it yet, but I'm working on it,
at least I'm working on the concept.

>>When we listen to a human speaking, we have a sense of commonality. 
 
>This "sense of commonality" depends on much more than just being human. 
>There is much less sense of commonality with humans from very different 
>cultures. 

No anxiety here, I guess Neil and I agree.

>>Not so with a turing tested computer, unless we happen to be intimately 
>>familiar with the program. 
 
>Who sez?  Do you happen to know of any computers which have passed the TT 
>so that you can test this out? 

Neil, you DOG, just when we were beginning to get along.  Who sez "sez" on
this network besides me.  I think you're making fun of me Neil, pally. 

I guess I'm going to have to grant reality to some TV program I saw about a
Turing contest.  The imprint it left on my brain was that somewhere out
there on planet Earth are occasionally such things as Turing contests, with
some machines scoring better than others.  Perhaps none have earned a
passing grade, but I'll just betcha if one ever does it'll have a lot more
in common with those computers than it does with me.

>>In my mind, the issue of "grounding" boils down to defining the
>>particular qualities of our own mind that we would like to see duplicated
>>in the computer, the degree of commonality. 
 
>It [grounding] has much more to do with what you have learned from 
>experience, and this includes the many cultural traditions which you take 
>for granted without any thought. 

Neil!  Guy!  What do you think I'm talking about?  (insert quick grant of
reality to cultural traditions).  I'm not talking about my grounding, I'm
talking about the computer's grounding.  If that requires programming it
with human-style cultural traditions and experience, let's go for it. 

BTW, tentative official definition of grounding, curtesy of Gary Forbis

>An entity may be said to be grounded with respect to an environment when, 
>using its model of the environment, it can make a plan to achieve a goal 
>in the environment and then, adjusting the plan as necessary, have an 
>effect in the environment and achieve the goal.  The symbols in the model 
>may be said to be grounded to their corresponding entities in the
>environment when the entity having the model refers to them when acting
>upon the corresponding entities in the entity's environment. 

Anxiety relieved. Grant reality to common sense.  Exit introspective state. 

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


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