Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 14:03:58 06/27/01
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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 > >This standard seems quite different than the one you quote above as the expert >certified definition. In fact, the bar set by Turing is much higher than simply >solving a problem. I am not saying that your definition is wrong; I just want >to point out that even experts disagree (or at the very least define their terms >differently). > >It is interesting to note that there was an extended discussion back in r.g.c.c. >several years ago about whether chess computers could pass a 'very limited >Turing Test', where the scope of the questions is restricted to chess positions >with a single best move and the expected answer is that best move. I forget >who, but someone pointed out that the computers could not pass even this limited >test, because if you fed them 20 long, complicated mates, the computer would >respond much more accurately (and quickly) than any human could be expected to. > > - Dan
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