Someone might say that the animal brain is a part of the body, whereas a computer is not. Therefore, they might conclude, AGI is impossible. I disagree with this point of view because the animal body might be seen as a kind of machine. And there are two aspects about computers that indicate that higher intelligence is feasible. As computers have developed they have been able to do more things that once were thought of as being something that only an intelligent creature could do. And in some cases computers are much better at doing some task than humans are. These tend to be mathematical or based on quick look-up comparison tasks and these cases tend to be narrow. In fact, human beings often make mistakes because they have so much trouble focusing on narrow tasks. Computers have still not shown the judgement and full range of creativity that humans seem to have.
The argument that because brains are a part of the body, computer programs have to be part of a body in order to show higher judgement and greater intelligence is just not a reasonable conclusion. When computers programs operate they react to data that is delivered in a method that is common to all contemporary computers. To imagine that digitized sensory data, for example, is somehow made of a different kind of stuff than other digital data is absurd. There is no question that the IO Data Environment that an AGI program is operating in has to contain a certain kind of richness of 'kinds' of data 'objects' and 'kinds' of relations between those 'objects' in order for genuine intelligence to emerge or become apparent. However the argument that only robotic data is rich enough to allow intelligence to emerge is not borne of insight about the nature of computer programming or from actual experimentation. If the argument that AGI programs have to be part of a robot in order for genuine intelligence to emerge was true, then it would have happened and it would be happening. The argument is not based on actual experimental data. It is true that we have to study the nature of intelligence by looking at animal life. However, the belief that those insights can be transferred to digital computers -by embodying them with the full force and complexity of life- is absurd. It has obviously not been possible to do that and it is not reasonable to conclude that it will be possible in the foreseeable. An inability to recognize that there are important distinctions between animal brains and digital computers and an inability to delineate between some of those most important distinctions are not reasonable starting points to examine the nature of the technology to see how it can be applied to the problem of creating artificial general intelligence. A computer program is not exactly the same as a living brain (that operates as part of a living animal). There is no experimental basis for concluding that robotic interactions are necessary for genuine AGI to emerge. And, based on insight about how computers actually work the belief that computer-robotic connectivity is essential for AGI to emerge is not insightful. Computer programs react to data whether they are in robots or not. Its all just data. (This is a little abrupt because it is an old argument that is has been over hashed in these AI discussion groups.) Jim Bromer ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-c97d2393 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-2484a968 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
