On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 10:48 AM Steve Richfield <[email protected]> wrote:
> There seems to be a sort of universal confusion between "computer", > digital computer", "stored program computer", et al. > > My very first computer program composed rock and roll melodies on a > Borroughs E-101. It was a plugboard programmed electromechanical digital > computer with no stored program. > > It WAS a computer, though not the sort that most folks here are used to > dealing with. > > I would say it was 'computation' carried out on the basis of the physics of the plugboard components. The 'program' or 'model', like that in analog/neuromorphic computers, is hardwired and implicit. The variability of parameters is in the adjustability in the suite of components available to plug together. My dad bought an ARP keyboard synthesiser in the 1970s. It was fantastic fun. Same concept of plug-able interconnects. The same kind of 'computation' done on the basis of a known set of base functions (various oscillators and modulation techniques). Computation of a model. So my distinction is between 'computation' and 'computer'. By computer I mean what ~100% of AGI folk use: Von_neumann digital. Of course this is a very limited and poorly defined use of the word. But if you use the word 'computer' out in the real world, to neuroscientists, for example, that is what the word invokes. If you trundle over into 'neuromorphic computing' you'll see they almost universally speak of 'computation' as 'emulation'. As if it isn't confused enough. If you and I, after 70 years, can still have an identifiable mismatch in what we mean when we use the words COMPUTATION and COMPUTER, and clear differences can be articulated, then we have proved that the science disciplines involved (neuroscience and computer science) have no proper, trained, understood, consistent grip on it either. Imagine that, after 70 years. And the entire project's goals are critically dependent on that consistency. Use the word 'computer' in a paper. Use the word 'computation'. Use either word in an AI/AGI paragraph and then watch the miscommunication go rife! if you said 'to do AGI is to use a computer', what are you referring to? I can build 2 AGI chips based on the brain. A) One with brain physics and B) one with a digital computer physics computing a model of the brain physics. Both are arguably 'computation' of some kind. Dress them both in the same robot suit. *Which is AGI? *If that distinction in any way depends on the difference in word meaning, the enterprise is in trouble and doesn't know it. You'd think that if AGI was properly set up as a profession, there's be no mismatch in semantics. We'd all know what the words refer to and it would be consistent. The time for opinions is long passed. cheers colin ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T87761d322a3126b1-M72d061e54a57bbc873e40d38 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
