X-Message-Number: 5776 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: CryoNet #5472 - #5474 Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 11:32:12 -0800 (PST) Hi again! The key issue about making "intelligent machines" is working out just what is meant by intelligent. A machine is not intelligent just because it can do something which I can't, even if that is something we ordinarily think of as "mental". I can't even do much arithmetic without pen and paper, or a calculator. The intelligence lies in the creator of the computer or the calculator, not in the machines themselves. If we start breaking down "intelligence" into specific abilities, it no longer looks so clear that consciousness is needed to do them. And maybe even better than we can. But of course we don't consider the ability to do lots of arithmetic very fast to be "intelligence". Sometimes a component of "intelligence", but not the same. Other such abilities raise the same issue. Even the recent chess match between Kasparov and Deep Blue wasn't really a match between Kasparov and a machine: it was a match between Kasparov and the engineers who built Deep Blue. One fundamental difference between Deep Blue and any living vertebrate is very simple and maybe even profound. The animal is set up with its own desires, and uses its brain as one means to achieve those desires. And it is the desires and feelings which play the lead role here (in advanced animals, there is feedback, but desires and feelings still play the lead role). To put it very succinctly (perhaps too much) it is our desires and feelings which make us intelligent, not our ability to remember, or calculate, or whatever: a neat little paradox. But I don't think that sums up "intelligence" even then. The word is put about so much, but no one seems to know what it really means --- unless we restrict the field (say to "intelligence tests") so much that in terms of behavior we have very little. (No doubt another set of engineers, if they wished to, and if others agreed with these desires enough to provide the funding, could make a machine to pass "intelligence tests". If you believe that such a machine, just because it can do that, is "intelligent", you simply haven't thought out what you mean). Best to all, and a long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5776