X-Message-Number: 15914
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 07:55:00 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: about machine intelligence etc

Hi everyone!

It's coming close to PERIASTRON time again, in which I will be offline
for a while. However the discussion on Cryonet 15908-15912 about future
AI machines versus improved humans deserves just a few words.

1. As seems to happen often, the issue of emotions etc seems to have
   been forgotten by some of those discussing these issues. They deserve
   the same attention as intelligence, certainly if you wish to make
   a truly autonomous AI machine (not that we've yet come close, but
   people are working on it). If we really want independent machines,
   we're going to have to understand not just how our brains produce
   and deal with knowledge, but how they produce and deal with emotions
   too. Right now, this isn't known ... though they know more about
   emotions than about knowledge.

2. Even to improve human beings we need first to understand how our
   different memories work. Again, we are moving in that direction, but
   haven't yet succeeded. We do not really connect a computer to 
   ourselves simply by putting it inside our skull and connecting it
   to a few nerves. The only difference between such a device and 
   one which is separate from us and operated with our voice or our
   hands is that the neurons to which it is connected aren't the 
   same... and probably those of our voice or fingers would actually
   do much better (after all, they're designed for just such tasks).

   Sure, we have it connected in a literal sense. But that connection
   has no relation to the way in which our nerves connect to other
   nerves... which presumably is what is wanted by such a system.

3. If a group wishes to make a hyperintelligent and hyperhelpful
   computer, they have a hard problem ahead of them. But even supposing
   that they did so, a major problem will still remain unsolved: how
   to convince everyone that this computer is hyperhelpful. We may
   someday seem lots of such computers, all claimed to be hyper-
   intelligent and hyperhelpful by the groups which made each one.
   And knowing how humans work, those computers will probably 
   disagree on how to be hyperhelpful, too, and so we get not only
   humans who disagree with one another but computers too.

   For some this may be fun to watch, if nothing else. None of them
   will take over. Perhaps the human beings (aided by various 
   computer peripherals) will decide to turn off all of these 
   special computers (no doubt after some time and arguments) but
   as an aim it looks to me like an ultimate waste of time.

4. As a means to improve ourselves, computers have lots of potential.
   They need not even attach to our anatomy (or brain) to do this,
   though when we work out how our brains work it may be useful to
   attach some of them more directly. Yet just like any tool, they
   will need some understanding on our part to use them. Sure, we'll
   be able to make it relatively easy to acquire that understanding,
   but it will still be needed... and RELATIVELY easy doesn't mean
   easy. 

No doubt there are other appropriate comments, too, but I will leave
it to these for now.

		Best wishes and long long life for all,

			Thomas Donaldson

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