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AIList Digest Volume 1 Issue 074
AIList Digest Wednesday, 12 Oct 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 74
Today's Topics:
Journals - AI Journal,
Query - Miller's "Living Systems",
Technology Transfer - DoD Reviews,
Conciousness
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 83 07:54 PDT
From: Bobrow.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
Subject: AI Journal
The information provided by Larry Cipriani about the AI Journal in the
last issue of AINET is WRONG in a number of important particulars.
Institutional subscriptions to the Artificial Intelligence Journal are
$176 this year (not $136). Personal subscriptions are available
for $50 per year for members of the AAAI, SIGART and AISB. The
circulation is about 2,000 (not 1,100). Finally, the AI journal
consists of eight issues this year, and nine issues next year (not
bimonthly).
Thanks
Dan Bobrow (Editor-in-Chief)
Bobrow@PARC
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 83 15:41 EDT
From: David Axler <Axler.UPenn@Rand-Relay>
Subject: Bibliographic Query
Just wondering if anybody out there has read the book 'Living Systems'
by James G. Miller (Mc Graw - Hill, 1977)., and, if so, whether they feel that
Miller's theories have any relevance to present-day AI research. I won't
even attempt to summarize the book's content here, as it's over 1K pages in
length, but some of the reviews of it that I've run across seem to imply that
it might well be useful in some AI work.
Any comments?
Dave Axler (Axler.Upenn-1100@UPenn@Udel-Relay)
------------------------------
Date: 7 Oct 1983 08:11-EDT
From: TAYLOR@RADC-TOPS20
Subject: DoD "reviews"
I must agree with Earl Weaver's comments on the DoD review of DoD
sponsored publications with one additional comment...since I have
"lived and worked" in that environment for more than six years.
DoD has learned (through experience) that given enough
unclassified material, much classified information can be
deduced. I have seen documents whose individual paragraphs were
unclassified, but when grouped to gether as a single document it
provided too much sensitive information to leave unclassified.
Roz (RTaylor@RADC-MULTICS)
------------------------------
Date: 4 Oct 83 19:25:13-PDT (Tue)
From: ihnp4!zehntel!tektronix!tekcad!ricks @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: Conference Announcement - (nf)
Article-I.D.: tekcad.66
> **************** CONFERENCE ****************
>
> "Intelligent Systems and Machines"
>
> Oakland University, Rochester Michigan
>
> April 24-25, 1984
>
> *********************************************
>
>AUTHORS PLEASE NOTE: A Public Release/Sensitivity Approval is necessary.
>Authors from DOD, DOD contractors, and individuals whose work is government
>funded must have their papers reviewed for public release and more
>importantly sensitivity (i.e. an operations security review for sensitive
>unclassified material) by the security office of their sponsoring agency.
Another example of so called "scientists" bowing to governmental
pressure to let them decide if the paper you want to publish is OK to
publish. I think that this type of activity is reprehensible and as con-
cerned scientists we should do everything in our power to stop this cen-
sorship of research. I urge everyone to boycott this conference and any
others like it which REQUIRE a Public Release/Sensitivty Approval (funny
how the government tries to make censorship palatible with different words,
isn't it). If we don't stop this now, we may be passing every bit of research
we do under the nose of bureaucrats who don't know an expert system from
an accounting package and who have the power to stop publication of anything
they consider dangerous.
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to
take it anymore!!!!
Frank Adrian
(teklabs!tekcad!franka)
------------------------------
Date: 6 Oct 83 6:13:46-PDT (Thu)
From: hplabs!hao!seismo!rlgvax!cvl!umcp-cs!aplvax!eric @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: Alas, I must flame...
Article-I.D.: aplvax.358
The "sensitivity" issue is not limited to government - most
companies also limit the distribution of information that they
consider "company private". I find very little wrong with the
idea of "we paid for it, we should benefit from it". The simple
truth is that they did underwrite the cost of the research. No one
is forced to work under these conditions, but if you want to take
the bucks, you have to realize that there are conditions attached
to them. On the whole, DoD has been amazingly open with the disclosure
of it CS research - one big example is ARPANET. True, they are now
wanting to split it up, but they are still leaving half of it to
research facilities who did not foot the bill for its development.
Perhaps it can be carried to extremes (I have never seen that happen,
but lets assume it that it can happen), they contracted for the work
to be done, and it is theirs to do with as they wish.
--
eric
...!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!eric
------------------------------
Date: 7 Oct 83 18:56:18-PDT (Fri)
From: npois!hogpc!houti!ariel!vax135!floyd!cmcl2!csd1!condict@Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: the Halting problem.
Article-I.D.: csd1.124
[Very long article.]
Self-awareness is an illusion? I've heard this curious statement
before and never understood it. YOUR self-awareness may be an
illusion that is fooling me, and you may think that MY self-awareness
is an illusion, but one thing that you cannot deny (the very, only
thing that you know for sure) is that you, yourself, in there looking
out at the world through your eyeballs, are aware of yourself doing
that. At least you cannot deny it if it is true. The point is, I
know that I have self-awareness -- by the very act of experiencing
it. You cannot take this away from me by telling me that my
experience is an illusion. That is a patently ludicrous statement,
sillier even then when your mother (no offense -- okay, my mother,
then) used to tell you that the pain was all in your head. Of course
it is! That is exactly what the problem is!
Let me try to say this another way, since I have never been able to
get this across to someone who doesn't already believe it. There are
some statements that are true by definition, for instance, the
statement, "I pronounce you man and wife". The pronouncement happens
by the very saying of it and cannot be denied by anyone who has heard
it, although the legitimacy of the marriage can be questioned, of
course. The self-awareness thing is completely internal, so you may
sensibly question the statement "I have self-awareness" when it comes
from someone else. What you cannot rationally say is "Gee, I wonder
if I really am aware of being in this body and looking down at my
hands with these two eyes and making my fingers wiggle at will?" To
ask this ques- tion seriously of yourself is an indication that you
need immediate psychiatric help. Go directly to Bellvue and commit
yourself. It is as lunatic a question as asking yourself "Gee, am I
really feeling this pain or is it only an illusion that I hurt so bad
that I would happily throw myself in the trash masher to extinguish
it?"
For those of you who misunderstand what I mean by self-awareness,
here is the best I can do at an explanation. There is an obvious
sense in which my body is not me. You can cut off any piece of it
that leaves the rest functioning (alive and able to think) and the
piece that is cut off will not take part in any of my experiences,
while the rest of the body will still contain (be the center for?) my
self-awareness. You may think that this is just because my brain is
in the big piece. No, there is something more to it than that. With
a little imagination you can picture an android being constructed
someday that has an AI brain that can be programmed with all the
memories you have now and all the same mental faculties. Now picture
yourself observing the android and noting that it is an exact copy of
you. You can then imagine actually BEING that android, seeing what
it sees, feeling what it feels. What is the difference between
observing the android and being the android? It is just this -- in
the latter case your self-awareness is centered in the android, while
in the former it is not. That is what self-awareness, also called a
soul, is. It is the one true meaning of the word "I", which does not
refer to any particular collection of atoms, but rather to the "you"
that is occupying the body. This is not a religous issue either, so
back off, all you atheist and Christian fanatics. I'm just calling
it a soul because it is the real "me", and I can imagine it residing
in various different bodies and machines, although I would, of
course, prefer some to others.
This, then, is the reason I would never step into one of those
teleporters that functions by ripping apart your atoms, then
reconstructing an exact copy at a distant site. My self-awareness,
while it doesn't need a biological body to exist, needs something!
What guarantee do I have that "I", the "me" that sees and hears the
door of the transporter chamber clang shut, will actually be able to
find the new copy of my body when it is reconstructed three million
parsecs away. Some of you are laughing at my lack of modernism here,
but I can have the last laugh if you're stupid enough to get into the
teleporter with me at the controls. Suppose it functions like this
(from a real sci-fi story that I read): It scans your body, transmits
the copying information, then when it is certain that the copy got
through it zaps the old copy, to avoid the inconvenience of there
being two of you (a real mess at tax time!). Now this doesn't bother
you a bit since it all happens in micro-seconds and your
self-awareness, being an illusion, is not to be consulted in the
matter. But suppose I put your beliefs to the test by setting the
controls so that the copy is made but the original is not destroyed.
You get out of the teleporter at both ends, with the original you
thinking that something went wrong. I greet you with:
"Hi there! Don't worry, you got transported okay. Here, you can
talk to your copy on the telephone to make sure. The reason that I
didn't destroy this copy of you is because I thought you would enjoy
doing it yourself. Not many people get to commit suicide and still
be around to talk about it at cocktail parties, eh? Now, would you
like the hari-kari knife, the laser death ray, or the nice little red
pills?"
You, of course, would see no problem whatsoever with doing yourself
in on the spot, and would thank me for adding a little excitement to
your otherwise mundane trip. Right? What, you have a problem with
this scenario? Oh, it doesn't bother you if only one copy of you
exists at a time, but if there are ever two, by some error, your
spouse is stuck with both of you? What does the timing have to do
with your belief in self-awareness? Relativity theory says that the
order of the two events is indeterminate anyway.
People who won't admit the reality of their own self-awareness have
always bothered me. I'm not sure I want to go out for a beer with,
much less date or marry someone who doesn't at least claim to have
self-awareness (even if they're only faking). I get this image of me
riding in a car with this non-self-aware person, when suddenly, as we
reach a curve with a huge semi coming in the other direction, they
fail to move the wheel to stay in the right lane, not seeing any
particular reason to attempt to extend their own unimportant
existence. After all, if their awareness is just an illusion, the
implication is that they are really just a biological automaton and
it don't make no never mind what happens to it (or the one in the
next seat, for that matter, emitting the strange sounds and clutching
the dashboard).
The Big Unanswered Question then (which belongs in net.philosophy,
where I will expect to see the answer) is this:
"Why do I have self-awareness?"
By this I do not mean, why does my body emit sounds that your body
interprets to be statements that my body is making about itself. I
mean why am *I* here, and not just my body and brain? You can't tell
me that I'm not, because I have a better vantage point than you do,
being me and not you. I am the only one qualified to rule on the
issue, and I'll thank you to keep your opinion to yourself. This
doesn't alter the fact that I find my existence (that is, the
existence of my awareness, not my physical support system), to be
rather arbitrary. I feel that my body/brain combination could get
along just fine without it, and would not waste so much time reading
and writing windy news articles.
Enough of this, already, but I want to close by describing what
happened when I had this conversation with two good friends. They
were refusing to agree to any of it, and I was starting to get a
little suspicious. Only, half in jest, I tried explaining things
this way. I said:
"Look, I know I'm in here, I can see myself seeing and hear myself
hearing, but I'm willing to admit that maybe you two aren't really
self-aware. Maybe, in fact, you're robots, everybody is robots
except me. There really is no Cornell University, or U.S.A. for that
matter. It's all an elaborate production by some insidious showman
who constructs fake buildings and offices wherever I go and rips them
down behind me when I leave."
Whereupon a strange, unreadable look came over Dean's face, and he
called to someone I couldn't see, "Okay, jig's up! Cut! He figured it
out." (Hands motioning, now) "Get, those props out of here, tear down
those building fronts, ... "
Scared the pants off me.
Michael Condict ...!cmcl2!csd1!condict
New York U.
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End of AIList Digest
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