HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: unpublished chapters of "The Turing Option"
Date: 28 Sep 92 17:40:24 GMT
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory

In article <1992Sep28.143838.5772@hawk.cs.ukans.edu> spratt@hawk.cs.ukans.edu (Lindsey Spratt) writes:
>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

I like Benford's work very much.  In "Tides of Light" he envisions a
future in which it is possible to download a copy of an "aspect" of a
person's personality/knowledge base -- and then implant a litle
computer in another person's brain.  Makes a good story.  AT this
stage, Benford has wisely sidestepped the problem of how to integrate
someone else's knowledge with your own knowledge.  He does this by
connecting the output of the "aspects" to the owner's sensory systems
so that the owner simply hears and sees displays presented by the
implant. So it isn't very much part of your mind -- at least at first.

Benford is letting me read the unfinished draft of a sequel to this.
It has a good deal more detail about how these "aspects" might
function.

Vernor Vinge's new novel, "A Fire Upon the Deep" also discusses the
problem of merging several sub-personalities.  One of the alien
cultures consists of five-tuples of such units, and the novel
discusses what might happen when some of them die and need to be
replaced.  Usually the remaining group has serious trouble.  I haven't
finished this really fine book, but so far, every page has some new
ideas.
From: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Summary: Dumb engineer viewpoint
Date: 25 Sep 92 14:54:35 GMT
Followup-To: comp.ai.philosophy
Organization: TRW Systems Division, Fairfax VA


Looking at it from a comp sci perspective, you might be saying that the
"operating system" supports consciousness directly. That appears to be
true for mammals. What that means, I don't know, but based on Walter
Freeman's presentation on Saturday, it appears that the "native
instruction set" for the neocortex supports consciousness directly.

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

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard)
Subject: Re: AI rights :-)
Organization: The Turing Project, Charlottesville Virginia.
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 12:25:04 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.021220.18977@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
>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.
                                   ^^^^^^^^^

Maybe not sufficient, but how can one be sentient without having a brain?
Don't resort to the supernatural, it still requires information processing.

>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? 

Not all artificial intelligence would be, but there is absolutely no reason
to believe that a machine cannot be sentient, after all we are machine and
we are sentient....

>What evidence do you have that
>artificial sentience is possible? 

The only thing that would prevent this is the existance of a supernatural,
something which there is absolutely no evidence for. Otherwise we know
that AI is possible since the brain works.

>How do you propose to distinguish between
>sentient "true AI" constructs and mere non-sentient though complex tools?

Whats the reason to distinguish between a person and a complex tool?
What distinguishs an AI passing the turing test from a human being?
-- 
------          Join the Pythagorean Reform Church!               .
\    /        Repent of your evil irrational numbers             . .
 \  /   and bean eating ways. Accept 10 into your heart!        . . .
  \/   Call the Pythagorean Reform Church BBS at 508-793-9568  . . . .
From: dab@ism.isc.com (Dave Butterfield)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Date: 5 Oct 92 23:24:32 GMT
Organization: x
NNTP-Posting-Host: change

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.

Dave
-- 
                     Vote for *anybody* but Quayle!
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: saeed@a.cs.okstate.edu (SAEED FAISEL)
Subject: what do you know about IDS model ?
Organization: Oklahoma State University, Computer Science, Stillwater
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 92 23:06:17 GMT

I need some info on the IDS model suggested by Cornsweet & Yellot.
And I want to start with a comprehensive bibliography on IDS.

Any email containing any pointers like any work done related to IDS,
specially any publications, etc will be appreciated.

I would also like to correspond with anyone currently working on it.


-- 

Faisel Saeed
Computer Science Department,   Oklahoma State University,   Stillwater, OK 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding
Date: 29 Sep 92 14:16:49 GMT
Organization: TRW Systems Division, Fairfax VA


Have you looked at what Walter Freeman did? It appears that the neocortex
downloads instructions (perhaps even a "program") to the nucleus of the
olfactory bulb identifying objects to smell for and the corresponding
patterns. There are no invariants in the nucleus, rather there are what
appear to be programs or patterns. With each breath, the nucleus resets to
an initial state and then rapidly (and chaotically) amplifies the patterns
seen and deamplifies the patterns not seen. This then results in one of
the following:
1. A report on specific semantic objects detected,
2. A report of non-detection, or
3. A report of something non-recognized being detected.
A category 3 detection results in an orientation reaction.

Apparently the only syntactic grounding is the exchange between the
individual olfactory sense cells and the nucleus of the bulb, which is
about as semantically grounded as you can be. Pribram has evidence that
the same thing happens in the ear and eye. We may well find that the
spinal column is semantically grounded, too, for touch and body position.
These downloaded "programs" have to be sufficiently sophisticated that
they can control how they interpret the sensory data they monitor. I
speculate that they include a (simple) dynamic model of the object they
are monitoring.


















(Damn newsreader!)

-- 
Harry Erwin
Internet: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com
From: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Summary: A few comments on consciousness
Date: 29 Sep 92 17:12:31 GMT
Followup-To: comp.ai.philosophy
Organization: TRW Systems Division, Fairfax VA


I'm going to post a position on this argument to give people a target to
shoot at.

I suspect that most chordates are conscious, in the sense that their
brains operate semantic models and deviations from models to assess
external stimuli.

The dividing line between _self_ consciousness and lack of same appears to
lie between the apes and the monkeys. 

Hence consciousness is a primitive aspect to how we function and might be
regarded as "axiomatic."

Where do I stand on Searle's Chinese Room argument? I need to tell a
story. Most high schools teach students latin by training them in a
decoding algorithm that allows them to "unpack" latin literature. My twins
commented that they didn't "understand" latin until they tried to speak it
and later to think in it. This implies to me that "understanding" is not
algorithmic but rather reflects the acquisition of a generative model for
speaking the language. This is similar to how a fish predicts where its
neighbors will be in a school--it models their behavior using a generative
model. Hence in that sense, I suspect fish can learn Chinese more readily
than a robot can. 















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

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle)
Subject: Re: AI rights 
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 06:04:03 GMT

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

      It's not clear that all sentient systems should have rights.
It's too early to really address this issue, but it's worth considering
that the motivational system of an AI is somewhat arbitrary.  Some
motivational systems are sufficiently incompatible with human society
that coexistence will not be workable.

      Systems which are evolved, like Tierra, may present a problem.
Forced evolution in hostile environments may result in systems with
very strong survival-at-all-costs imperatives.  These may not be 
something we want around.

      Nagle's prediction for the year: before the '90s are out,
someone will have combined something like Tierra with something
like the Morris worm, and the result will be a big headache for
many people.

      As for the rights issue, for the time being, I suggest a rule of thumb.
If you believe Moravec (in "Mind Children"), an ant has about 10 MIPS,
a mouse has about 10,000 MIPS, and a human has about 10,000,000 MIPS.
(Don't argue about this until you're read the book, please.  He may
be wrong, but he does have a rational basis for deriving these numbers.)
So I suggest that we take the position that we can ignore the rights
issue for anything below a few thousand MIPS.  But as we advance
well beyond that level, it may become a real issue.

					John Nagle
From: pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Organization: UTCS Public Access
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 17:12:23 GMT

In article <1992Oct5.022907.6131@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
..........
>
>Does your system lose its putative consciousness 1) when the wrong rules are 
>substituted 2) when the wrong rules are implemented 3) when the wrong 
>result is output or 4) not at all, regardless of how wrong the algorithm is?
>
Ask the same questions about yourself. (Hint: there are plenty of situations
where you can loose consciousness, with your brain still working)

>Either all procedures are conscious or only some procedures are conscious.
 
Why? Who said so? There are plenty of processes in the brain and only some of
them contribute to consciousness.

>My question is whether you believe an arbitrary algorithm, to which no meaning
>can plausibly be ascribed, is conscious, or whether only certain ones are, and 
>how you can distinguish between the two types if not. What about an algorithm
>which responds appropriately to any Chinese input unless the output is ready on
>an even numbered clock tick, in which case it ersponds with gibberish? Is it
>half conscious?

Who says 'arbitrary algorithm'?
>
>Only the tenacious insistence that intelligent function is identical to
>experience allows one to insist that me following rules I don't understand 
>creates a conscious entity, while me following rules I do understand does not.
>
Again, where did you get this from? I do not see how is it relevant whether
a person following the rules understands them or not.
>
...........
>But I think it's no trick; it's not the slowness of the me+rules system
>that bothers me- it's its structure. I cannot envision a plausible theory
>of subjective consciousness that could allow it to arise from such a system.
>
I would be very interested to hear what plausible theory of subjective 
consciousness can you envision (no restriction on a system from which it
might arise).

.............
>I am convinced that no better test than the Turing Test is possible, because
>there is no plausible objective measure for the presence or absence of
>subjective phenomena. I have no doubt that many in AI would consider a
>implementation that passed the Turing Test as often as a human as
>a great success. Given that such a construct is a goal that some
>have in mind, reaching that goal would be inadequate evidence of the existence
>of the phenomenon of subjective consciousness implicitly being searched for.
>
In your earlier posting you've claimed that some animals also seem to be 
conscious. Have they passed TT? What criteria are used for stating that they
show consciousness and why couldn't a computer with a proper program satisfy
these criteria? 
..............

Andrzej Pindor
>
>mt
>


-- 
Andrzej Pindor
University of Toronto
Computing Services
pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca
From: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding
Date: 29 Sep 92 14:33:56 GMT
Organization: TRW Systems Division, Fairfax VA


Mark Rosenfelder comments that the meaning of many words is grounded in
sensory experience. But Freeman has shown that sensory experience is
processed semantically in the sense organs. Hence all experience is
subjective. Why then is there an objective reality? 

The answer may be that even the sense organs need a model to understand
the data they collect. The more that model reflects objective reality, the
better its predictions, and good predictions are necessary for survival. 

I believe all this has been said before, and better. My point is that this
interpretation is now supported experimentally. (If that has any meaning
here 8)).

Cheers,


















(Damn newsreader!)
-- 
Harry Erwin
Internet: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: mhf4421@usl.edu (Flynn Matthew H)
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Organization: University of Southwestern Louisiana
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 22:50:05 GMT

erlebach@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Thomas Erlebach) states in
  
> 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.

M.H.Flynn
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: self-evolution
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 18:41:06 GMT

In article <BvIAv1.CLr@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>In article <1992Oct1.234648.21710@mprgate.mpr.ca> siemens@mprgate.mpr.ca (Curtis Siemens) writes:
>>
>>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 ...

>>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.

To put this in perspective, the VM operating system on the IBM-370 series
does a pretty good job of simulating an IBM-370, to the extent that you
can boot up VM in a simulated virtual machine.

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard)
Subject: AI rights :-)
Organization: The Turing Project, Charlottesville Virginia.
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 23:21:14 GMT

Forgive me if this subject has already been discussed to death here...

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?
-- 
------          Join the Pythagorean Reform Church!               .
\    /        Repent of your evil irrational numbers             . .
 \  /   and bean eating ways. Accept 10 into your heart!        . . .
  \/   Call the Pythagorean Reform Church BBS at 508-793-9568  . . . .
    
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Date: 3 Oct 92 12:33:24 GMT
Organization: TRW Systems Division, Fairfax VA

Unfortunately, when a stroke occurs and the brain is damaged, the person
loses those capabilities. There's no evidence of an intact "soul"
struggling to make use of a damaged brain, rather it appears that the
"soul" is damaged. Except in a trivial sense, the soul and the operating
brain are one. If you're religious, you'll find that consistent with
Jewish thought, not traditional Christian thought.

...
-- 
Harry Erwin
Internet: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Turing Test Myths
Date: 29 Sep 92 17:17:55 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <1992Sep9.185917.829@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In article <7499@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>This is not necessarily true.  Think, for example, of how much 
>>easier it is to have a reading knowledge of a programming language
>>than a writing knowledge.  
>
>You have fallen victim to an error commonly made by those who pretend
>to be knowledgeable about computers, but in fact are not.  It is far
>far easier to have a writing knowledge of a programming language that
>to have a reading knowledge.

But since I in fact am knowledgeable about computers, I don't
see why I should believe your unsupported asertion rather than
my own experience (and that of a number of other people).
From: barry@chezmoto.ai.mit.edu (Barry Kort)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Date: 6 Oct 92 19:19:15 GMT
	<740@trwacs.fp.trw.com>
Organization: MicroMuse
In-reply-to: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com's message of 30 Sep 92 13:11:12 GMT

Daniel Dennett, Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, and author
of _Consciousness Explained_, recently spoke on this topic at a guest
lecture series at The MITRE Corporation in Beford, MA.  I asked him
whether Consciousness, which we usually think of as an emergent property
of a living brain, could arise from a sufficiently sophisticated
information processing system constructed from something other than
living neurons.  His answer was an unqualified yes.  He saw no reason
why intelligence and consciousness could not reside in a sufficiently
powerful computer processor.

Barry Kort
Visiting Scientist
Educational Technology Research
BBN Labs
Cambridge, MA
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: self-evolution
From: <GE0QC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Date: Friday, 2 Oct 1992 02:01:20 EDT
Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center

In reply to Bill:

I don't believe true randomness exists. Though greater minds have thought
otherwise. If one AL being thinks another AL being has a good design it could
alter its  to match the other.
If an Al thinks of a change to its algorithm would be for the better, a change
that is truly original and one that would meet the lchalenges of its
environment better than it could without, then, as suggested earlier, sorry
I forgot the person's name, it could copy itself add the change to its copy
and watch. If it fells it fells. If it works then the original can do a host
of things: terminate itself, stay the same, reprogram itself with the change,
etc. Sounds like mutations to me :) And choas make cool fractals anyway.
I think these AL beings will have a far different outlook on life/death than
we do. I know my outlook has changed ever since i got an intrest in Al.
Though (tangent) funny even though I have gone beyond not believing in
god (pre Al; small "g" on purpose) to not believing in life (makes me different
around my atheist friends). I have found that I become increasingly, I guess
the proper word is "spiritual" in the sense of peacefullness. I believe
Gandhi had something simillar in mind. Well maybe...

And to add. It occured to me too that slavery might occur. And not just
because of backwards wierdos.

Levi
geqc0@cunyvm

Shut down.......
From: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Date: 30 Sep 92 13:11:12 GMT
Organization: TRW Systems Division, Fairfax VA

The processing that underlies cognition appears to be chaotic. That makes
simulation a lot more problematic, since you have to deal with sensitive
dependence on initial conditions (which is required for responsiveness),
topological transitivity (required for coverage), and dense periodic
points (which can cause problems for simulations). When I was trying to
simulate chaotic decision-making processes, I found that I tended to drop
into relatively short terminal cycles. That phenomenon allowed me to
conclude that the underlying physical process was chaotic, but also meant
that my simulation results were invalid.

Cheers,






















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