Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: HLTs, definitions(?), and questions
From: DEMOGRB@LUST.LATROBE.EDU.AU (Max!)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 07:56:16 GMT
Organization: La Trobe University
X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.24

This is my first post here, having recently started reading this
group.  I have long been interested in AI, and the discussion here has
started me thinking, so here are some thoughts ... I welcome any feedback...

In any philosophical discussion I have been in, I have always endeavoured to
establish a base set of definitions and accepted assumptions wich are agreeable
to the group - otherwise the discussion tends to revolve around interpretations
rather than the point of the matter itself.  Is there a FAQ for this group,
with agreed definitions of things such as "intelligence", "grounding", etc.
or is that the raison d'etre for this topic?  A number of the posts I have
read have debated various definitions/interpretations of terms used throughout
the posts, hence my curiosity.

With regard to HLTs, I find it hard to ascribe intelligence to an AI wich
employs such a method.  As a programmer, I use lookup tables frequently for
various things, but I would not ascribe any degree of intelligence to my
program.  It would seem to me that an HLT avoids that which AI is trying to be,
namely "intelligent", by which I mean that intelligence infers some sort of
analysis of information, application of rules to data, i.e. some sort of
processing other than :  Item # 232459:  Weather in Chicago = overcast,
which involves no _analysis_ of the data, merely an index into a data set
which has been composed externally.

To me, intelligence is taking a set of rules and applying them to data in
such a way as to produce some meaningful result.   And please - I am not trying
to _define_ intelligence, just relay the sort of thing it implies to me.

If we look at a baby for a moment ... A baby has certain abilities ihnerent
in its makeup at its birth.  One of these abilities is to learn.  This is
perhaps the most elusive in terms of computers, but lets ignore that for
the moment.  A baby is taught by its parents how to speak, walk, eat, etc.
It learns all of these things, and at the same time adds this knowledge,
along with its observations of its environment to its experience.

Applying this in a simplistic approach to AI in computers, we say we have
a computer with the capacity to learn (or be taught) new things, we have
some sort of language to communicate with it, and thus we have the makings
of something capable of taking rules (or abilities) and applying it to
data (experience/knowledge).  I realise this does not immediately constitute
AI, but it does draw some parallels from real life.

A baby has no "world" (extent of known reality) at birth, but learns and
expands its view of _its_ world, which is purely subjective and personal
thing.  Can a computer not be given a "world" in which to operate, "rules"
regarding basic concepts/abilities, and be able to intelligently exist,
ie. understand its world, analyse it, and behave in such a way as we could
conceivably say it is (dare I say it) "intelligent" ?  Is it not "grounded"
in _its_ world ?

This is in direct contrast to the concept of an HLT, which tries to construct
a repository of canned responses, but which has no intrinsic value other than
to serve as a database for some dumb indexing algorithm.  There is no need
to supply an AI with every single possible answer (refer "the universe in
256-bits or less") - it should be able to infer and answer based on what
it does know.  I don't know what the weather is like in Chicago - will I
pass the Turing test?  I don't have an HLT - is an HLT more intelligent than
me ?

I hope there is some sense in my ramblings here - I would be very interested
in any comments, etc. you may have.


+---------------------------------+----------------------------------------+
|/\/\ax!         Gavin Baker      | Tell a man that there are a billion    |
|                                 | stars in the sky, and he will          |
|net: demogrb@lust.latrobe.edu.au | believe you - But -                    |
|cis: 100026,270                  | Tell him there is wet paint on a bench |
|bix: gbaker                      | and he has to touch it to be sure...   |
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Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy