Re: Happy New Year, CAP!

Lester Zick wrote:
> On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 01:02:33 GMT, Risujin <risujin@xxxxxxxxxxx> in
> comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>
> >Traveler wrote:
> >>>Just out of curiosity but, show of hands, how many here are actually
> >>>working on "true AI"? (And I mean more than philosophical implications,
> >>>but real theory.)
> >>
> >> Well I, for one, have been working on true AI from the very beginning
> >> (early 1990s) although I'm now considered a crank and a crackpot by
> >> many and I don't blame them. Still, I do have a few supporters.
> >> ahahaha...
> >>
> >> BTW, true AI, to me, means any AI mechanism
> >> that can be scaled up to human-level intelligence
> >> by adding more processing power.
> >
> > I don't buy the "more processing power" paradigm.
> > If you can describe exactly how the scaled-up
> > version will emerge into the desired behavior
> > then you could simply describe the scaled-up
> > version in the first place.

Maybe, maybe not. I don't see it as a case of "scaling
up" so much as "adding to" what is already there and
this would require larger and more powerful processing.

If intelligence is a set of skills higher intelligence
is simply more sophisticated and complex skills. Even
IQ tests now recognize that intelligence in one area
(skills in one area) do not mean the person has equal
skills in another area.

We can demonstrate an electronic spread *** with 64K
memory but modern spreadsheets have more skills added
which require more memory and processing power. The
old skills are still there. We can add numbers with
a hand calculator or a Pentium driven PC the result
is the same. But the Pentium driven PC can do more.

A cat without an auditory cortex can still learn to
react differently to different tones. But without the
processing power of the auditory cortex it lacks the
skills (processing power) to react to different melodies
(combinations of tones).


> This is a reasonable objection. But it also neglects a couple of
> important considerations. Scaling up intelligence mechanisms
> obviously requires more processing power. The real difficulty with
> any elementary intelligence mechanism is that it wouldn't look very
> intelligent and conventional empirical standards for the production
> of ai require that an ai artifact look and act intelligent. So there's
> no easy way to judge the presence of intelligence in elementary
> mechanisms without the appearance of intelligent behavior requiring
> substantial computing power. We could only judge the presence of
> intelligence on theoretical grounds but we have no way to do that
> without some theory of intelligence to begin with and that is exactly
> what is lacking.


So what is wrong with the definition I give above?
The intelligence of an organism is measured by the
number and complexity of the skills it has.



> This is exactly what is so stupid about academic rejection of theories
> and the analysis of intelligence in favor of robotics and declarations
> of intelligence. If we look at human embryos and even infants there is
> no obvious indication of consciousness even though we can reasonably
> expect its manifestation over time as the organism develops. Academic
> empirics simply demand organics manifest overt conscious behavior
> immediately.


Now you have introduced the "indication of consciousness"
which I see as a separate issue to "intelligence". I can
be just as much "conscious" whether I am being "intelligent"
or not. I am just as much alive and conscious with or
without brain damage to the parts of the brain required
for higher human intelligence.

When a lady, who had suffered a temporary brain malfunction,
was asked, that, if she was "awake" and "aware" why didn't she
respond? Her answer was "I couldn't think of anything to say".
Thinking of something to say requires intelligence. As to the
role of consciousness as also being a requirement for, or a
consequence of, higher level intelligence that is something
I am not sure of. But even if human intelligence required
"consciousness", consciousness itself does not make you
intelligent.


> So the "processing power" requirement does have some justification.
> The real difficulty entails the means to judge whether what we have at
> the level of elementary mechanisms is intelligence to begin with which
> would justify added computing power. The claims of academic robotics
> don't address this issue since they only recognize superficial aspects
> of intelligent behavior. So I definitely agree scaling up appearances
> alone in the absence of understanding intelligence is pointless.
>
> The second objection to your comment is that it assumes intelligent
> behavior at the scaled up level of "desired behavior" is already well
> enough defined to act as a criterion for intelligent behavior. I think
> if we understood what the scaled up macro behavior really is we
> wouldn't have the problem with the micro intelligence mechanisms to
> scale up. The most obvious problem with scaling arguments is they
> aren't supposed to produce effects of intelligence until the scaling
> is completed and we have no ability to project when the scaling will
> be completed since every projection so far has been met with further
> scaling demands.

This is only an issue if you think "intelligence" suddenly
appears at some threshold. If it is simply one of degree than
the idea of intelligence requiring scaling to be completed
is simply wrong. It is never is completed, it is added to, in
working stages.


--
JC

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