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Subject: Re: chess and AI.

Author: Ralf Elvsén

Date: 06:08:48 06/28/01

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On June 28, 2001 at 05:58:52, Graham Laight wrote:

>On June 27, 2001 at 21:15:19, Ricardo Gibert wrote:
>
>>On June 27, 2001 at 17:03:58, Bruce Moreland wrote:
>>
>>>On June 27, 2001 at 15:09:22, Dan Homan wrote:
>>>
>>>>On June 27, 2001 at 10:56:24, William H Rogers wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>It never ceases to amaze me how a small handful of people who may or may not
>>>>>have ever gone to college or even studied advance computer science and make
>>>>>statements that are 100% the opposite of some of the worlds greatest minds from
>>>>>all over the world have stated. The top great thinkers from almost every
>>>>>university in the world have defined A.I. and what it is suppost to do and yet
>>>>>there are a few young people here would match their intelligence againts theirs.
>>>>>Maybe the Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or people at M.I.T.s should look into getting
>>>>>rid of all of their Phd's and call you guys.
>>>>>A.I., as it has been losely defined is the ability of a device to solve or make
>>>>>decisions regarding a specific problem. How the machine was designed or
>>>>>programmed is not the point, it is what it does afterward when it is turned on
>>>>>and ran.
>>>>>Not trying to stir up more waves, but I have studied this matter for years.
>>>>>If you disagree, good, but just don't rewrite the worlds greatest accepted
>>>>>facts.
>>>>>Bill
>>>>
>>>>Hi,
>>>>
>>>>I am not sure that there is this universally agreed upon definition of
>>>>artificial intelligence that you quote.  Perhaps the first expert in computers,
>>>>Alan Turing, came up with the 'Turing Test' for artificial intelligence.  His
>>>>test is that you can ask the machine any twenty questions you want by typing
>>>>into a terminal and the answers appear on the screen.  If you cannot tell
>>>>whether the answers were given by the machine itself or another human (who might
>>>>be hidden in another room), then the machine is said to be 'intelligent'.
>>>
>>>The Turing test seems stupid to me, and I have no idea why it is touted as some
>>>sort of standard of anything.  It measures a program's ability to generalize in
>>>the domain of light conversation.  That's a fine thing to try to write a program
>>>to do, and it's a hard problem, but it doesn't make sense to draw a line and say
>>>that programs that can successfully make light conversation are intelligent and
>>>those that can't aren't, in some absolute sense.  There is no universal constant
>>>H, which is defined as the capabilities of a human, that also defines
>>>intelligent behavior.
>>>
>>>A dog can exhibit intelligent behavior, without coming anywhere close to being
>>>able to pass the Turing test.  Likewise, there are many humans who cannot
>>>successfully impersonate a particular human.  If you disbelieve this, just watch
>>>"To Tell the Truth" on TV.
>>>
>>>AI is not about making something that can solve the Turing test.  There are lots
>>>of AI problems that have nothing to do with being able to simulate light
>>>conversation.
>>>
>>>bruce
>>
>>
>>Perhaps your notion of intelligence can be distilled into: The ability to find
>>good solutions to NP hard problems.
>
>In that case, Lotus 123 (a spreadsheet) is intelligent.
>
>The "solver" menu options will both find numerical solutions to equations, and
>optimise the value of a given cell by modifying the values of other cells. And
>it will do it a whole lot quicker than any human could.
>
>I'm afraid I disagree with Bruce. I think the Turing test is good for the
>following reasons:
>
>* for better or for worse, it has become a standard which must be met - a global
>yardstick for comparing human intelligence with computers
>
>* it requires linguistic skill
>
>* it requires storage and fast, accurate retrieval of a huge amount of knowledge
>
>* progress on this test reflects the reality of the progress of computers
>against the human brain in terms of producing the right output for a given input
>(at the moment, computers can fool about 20-25 % of the population on the Turing
>test).
>
>The basic problem with Bruce's argument is that, as far as I can tell, anything
>that can do anything better than a human brain would have to be regarded as
>intelligent (e.g. mechanical calculators, Napier's Bones, etc).
>
>The weakness of the Turing test is that it does not take account of visual
>ability.
>
>-g

My main problem with the Turing test is that a member of, say, a
technologically advanced species from outer space wouldn't pass it.

Ralf



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