On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 3:35 AM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: > Wouldn’t Simulated Intelligence be a more appropriate term than Artificial > Intelligence? > > Thinking of it objectively, if we have a program which can model a > hurricane, we would call that hurricane a simulation, not an ‘artificial > hurricane’. If we modeled any physical substance, force, or field, we would > similarly say that we had simulated hydrogen or gravity or electromagnetism, > not that we had created artificial hydrogen, gravity, etc. > > By calling it artificial, we also emphasize a kind of obsolete notion of > natural vs man-made as categories of origin. If we used simulated instead, > the measure of intelligence would be framed more modestly as the degree to > which a system meets our expectations (or what we think or assume are our > expectations). Rather than assuming a universal index of intelligent > qualities which is independent from our own human qualities, we could > evaluate the success of a particular Turing emulation purely on its merits > as a convincing reflection of intelligence rather than presuming to have > replicated an organic conscious experience mechanically. > > The cost of losing the promise of imminently mastering awareness would, I > think, be outweighed by the gain of a more scientifically circumspect > approach. Putting the Promethean dream on hold, we could guard against the > shadow of its confirmation bias. My concern is that without such a > precaution, the promise of machine intelligence as a stage 1 simulacrum (a > faithful copy of an original, in Baudrillard’s terms), will be diluted to a > stage 3 simulacrum (a copy that masks the absence of a profound reality, > where the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful copy.)
A simulated hurricane is different from an actual hurricane, but simulated intelligence is the same as actual intelligence, just as simulated arithmetic is the same as actual arithmetic. Whether the intelligence has the same associated consciousness or not is a matter for debate, but not the intelligence itself. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
