The point re the computer-human nexus is simply that it's rather like the
horse doing the trick of counting for its master - if the master is there,
you can't be sure that the horse really is doing counting or understands
what it's doing, or that it could do the trick without its master.
Let me give you another analogy if it's of any help. The whole of science in
applying its current mechanistic paradigm to the world has also forgotten
that machines don't exist without humans. So cognitive psychology treats the
human mind like a computer. Actually it would be much truer and more
productive to treat the human mind like a human-computer hybrid, i.e. a
human using a computer. That opens new dimensions on human thinking - you
realise that human intelligent performance may not be so much a case of
some people having, and others not having, certain faculties but of some
people using, and others not using their faculties - as some do and some
don't use their computer's faculties (something that scientific psychology
rarely considers).
So I disagree - you have to look at the totality of how your computer is
used by a human, before you can be sure of how intelligent it is or isn't.
And I'm not trying to be difficult or patronising - if the whole of science
and major scientific minds can leave out the human factor, so can Pei.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pei Wang" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 12:10 PM
Subject: Re: [agi] Tommy
Mike,
I just wonder that whenever you find "there's one thing so screamingly
obvious that you guys don't seem to be taking it into account", have
it ever occurred to you that there may be a valid reason?
For the current issue, whether there is still human "in the loop" has
little to do with the machine's intelligence, as far as the human is
not responsible for specifying the machine's operation step-by-step.
In the long run, machines will surely become more and more autonomous,
but we probably still want to stay in the loop, even though
technically it won't be necessary. Anyway, "taking humans out of the
loop" doesn't sound like a good choice for AGI development at the
moment, unless you have a concrete design to show us otherwise.
Pei
On 5/11/07, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Josh,
>
Since the 90s there has been a strand in AI research that claims that
>> robotics is necessary to the enterprise, based on the notion that
>> having a body is necessary to intelligence. Symbols, it is said, must
>> be grounded in physical experience to have meaning. Without such
>> grounding AI practitioners are deceiving themselves by calling their
>> Lisp atoms things like MOTHER-IN-LAW when they really mean no more
>> than G2250.
>
Pei: I think these people correctly recognized a problem in traditional
AI,
> though they attributed it to a wrong cause.. Every implemented system
> already has a "body" --- the hardware, and
as long as the system has input and output, it has experience that
comes from its body. Of course, since the body is not human body, the
experience is not human experience. However, as far as this discussion
is concerned, it doesn't matter, since this kind of experience is
genuine experience that can be used to ground meaning of concepts.
Er, there's one thing so screamingly obvious that you guys don't seem to
be
taking it into account here. All these machines you are talking about
are
basically inert lumps of metal and don't exist without human beings to
switch them on, feed them & interpret them. Humans are still, pace Rodney
B,
"in the loop." Try taking humans out of the loop and then see what these
standalone computers do and don't understand - or what they do, period.
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