Well in the Chinese Room case I think the "book of instructions" is infinitely large to handle all cases, so things like misspellings and stuff would be included.... and I dont think that was meant to be a difference.
With the chinese room, we arent doing any reasoning really, just looking up answers according to instructions.... but given that, how do we determine "understanding"? James _______________________________________ James Ratcliff - http://falazar.com Looking for something... --- On Thu, 8/7/08, Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning --> Chinese Room To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, August 7, 2008, 2:31 PM >> Please Answer: Now how can we really say how this is different from human understanding? >> I receive a question, I rack my brain for stored facts, if relevant, and >> any experiences I have had if relevant, and respond, either with words or an action. The difference comes about then presented with a novel situation. The Chinese Room may be able to handle a *very* closely related situation yet a single small difference may throw it (like a single mis-spelled word in a book-sized block of text -- please don't harass me about Chinese and pictographs :-) A human being will not be thrown by minor differences since they "understand" that space around their known solutions as well as the exact solutions. ----- Original Message ----- From: James Ratcliff To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2008 2:13 PM Subject: Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning --> Chinese Room Back on the problem of "understanding" more below _______________________________________ James Ratcliff - http://falazar.com Looking for something... --- On Wed, 8/6/08, Terren Suydam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Terren Suydam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning --> Chinese Room To: [email protected] Date: Wednesday, August 6, 2008, 1:50 PM Abram, I think a simulated, grounded, embodied approach is the one exception to the otherwise correct Chinese Room (CR) argument. It is the keyhole through which we must pass to achieve strong AI. The Novamente example I gave may qualify as such an exception (although the hybrid nature of grounded and ungrounded knowledge used in the design is a question mark for me), and does not invalidate the arguments against ungrounded approaches. The CR argument works for ungrounded approaches, because without grounding, the symbols to be manipulated have no meaning, except within an external context that is totally independent of and inaccessible to the processing engine. --> Meaning and understanding here I dont believe are just a true false value. In this instance the Agent WOULD have some level of meaning known, if given a database of facts about cats it would be able to answer some questions about cats, and woudl understand cats to a certain extent. I believe for this to be further constructive, you have to show either 1) how an ungrounded symbolic approach does not apply to the CR argument, or 2) why, specifically, the argument fails to show that ungrounded approaches cannot achieve comprehension. Unfortunately, I have to take a break from the list (why are people cheering??). I will answer any further posts addressed to me in due time, but I have other commitments for the time being. Terren --------------------------------------------------------- --James Reply 1. Given that a Chinese Room VS an AI in a box, the agent replying to the chinese questions has no "understanding" of chinese. To all extents and purposes it is replying in a coherent way to all questions, and by the Turing test is unable to be different acting than a human. That meets my burden of being an AGI, if it replies always in reasonable manner. Whether it understands anything or not seems to be a totally different question. 2. Understanding, using any of the definitions, seems to be judgeable on a scale, emphasis on judgeable, in that there is no measure of understanding that can be done in a vacuum. So to say, does the AGI understand is nonsensical without that context. In school, we determine understanding by testing, and asking questions, and performing tasks. So an AGI it would seem would need to be handled in a similar fashion. A un-grounded AGI without a body when quizzed about certain items would show a certain level of understanding depending on the depth and correctness of its knowledgebases and routines. Is it truly "understanding" the concept any further than reading it, and answering the question? A grounded AGI may perform better because it is able to interact and gather more and better details about the topics. But in the end the grounded AGI simply has a larger lookup database of experiences it can use. When handed a question on a sheet of paper, it looks it up in the larger DB. A embodied robot AGI would have the added ability of interacting physically with the objects, therefor when handed a cup, it could look-up what to do with it, and "understand" that it could fill it up with a liquid, and follow a plan for that. In this sense it would be able to "prove" to an outsider that it understood what a cup was. Please Answer: Now how can we really say how this is different from human understanding? I receive a question, I rack my brain for stored facts, if relevant, and any experiences I have had if relevant, and respond, either with words or an action. agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
