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AIList Digest Volume 1 Issue 079
AIList Digest Monday, 17 Oct 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 79
Today's Topics:
AI Societies - Bledsoe Election,
AI Education - Videotapes & Rutgers Mini-Talks,
Psychology - Intuition & Conciousness
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Date: Fri 14 Oct 83 08:41:39-CDT
From: Robert L. Causey <Cgs.Causey@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>
Subject: Congratulations Woody!
[Reprinted from the UTexas-20 bboard.]
Woody Bledsoe has been named president-elect of the American
Association of Artificial Intelligence. He will become
president in August, 1984.
According to the U.T. press release Woody said, "You can't
replace the human, but you can greatly augment his abilities."
Woody has greatly augmented the computer's abilities. Congratulations!
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Date: 12 Oct 83 12:59:24-PDT (Wed)
From: ihnp4!hlexa!pcl @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: AI (and other) videotapes to be produced by AT&T Bell
Laboratories
Article-I.D.: hlexa.287
[I'm posting this for someone who does not have access to netnews.
Send comments to the address below; electronic mail to me will be
forwarded. - PCL]
AT&T Bell Laboratories is planning to produce a
videotape on artificial intelligence that concentrates
on "knowledge representation" and "search strategies"
in expert systems. The program will feature a Bell
Labs prototype expert system called ACE.
Interviews of Bell Labs developers will provide the
content. Technical explanations will be made graphic
with computer generated animation.
The tape will be sold to colleges and industry by
Hayden Book Company as part of a software series.
Other tapes will cover Software Quality, Software
Project Management and Software Design Methodologies.
Your comments are welcome. Write to W. L. Gaddis,
Senior Producer, Bell Laboratories, 150 John F. Kennedy
Parkway, Room 3L-528, Short Hills, NJ 07078
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Date: 16 Oct 83 22:42:42 EDT
From: Sri <Sridharan@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Subject: Mini-talks
Recently two notices were copied from the Rutgers bboard to Ailist.
They listed a number of "talks" by various faculty back to back.
Those who wondered how a talk could be given in 10 minutes and
those who wondered why a talk would be given in 10 minutes may
be glad to know the purpose of the series. This is the innovative
method that has been designed by the CS graduate students society
for introducing to new graduate students and new faculty members
the research interests of the CS faculty. Each talk typically outlined
the area of CS and AI of interest to the faculty member, discussed
research opportunities and the background (readings, courses) necessary
for doing research in that area.
I have participated in this mini-talk series for several years and
have found it valuable to myself as a speaker. To be given about 10 min
to say what I am interested in, does force me distill thoughts and to
say it simply. The feedback from students is also positive.
Perhaps you will hear some from some of the students too.
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Date: 11 Oct 83 2:44:12-PDT (Tue)
From: harpo!utah-cs!shebs @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: the Halting problem.
Article-I.D.: utah-cs.1985
I share your notion (that human ability is limited, and that machines
might actually go beyond man in "consciousness"), but not your confidence.
How do you intend to prove your ideas? You can't just wait for a fantastic
AI program to come along - you'll end up right back in the Turing Test
muddle. What *is* consciousness? How can it be characterized abstractly?
Think in terms of universal psychology - given a being X, is there an
effective procedure (used in the technical sense) to determine whether
that being is conscious? If so, what is that procedure?
AI is applied philosophy,
stan the l.h.
utah-cs!shebs
ps Re rational or universal psychology: a professor here observed that
it might end up with the status of category theory - mildly interesting
and all true, but basically worthless in practice... Any comments?
------------------------------
Date: 12 Oct 83 11:43:39-PDT (Wed)
From: decvax!cca!milla @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: the Halting problem.
Article-I.D.: cca.5880
Of course self-awareness is real. The point is that self-awareness
comes about BECAUSE of the illusion of consciousness. If you were
capable of only very primitive thought, you would be less self-aware.
The greater your capacity for complex thought, the more you perceive
that your actions are the result of an active, thinking entity. Man,
because of his capacity to form a model of the world in his mind, is
able to form a model of himself. This all makes sense from a purely
physical viewpoint; there is no need for a supernatural "soul" to
complement the brain. Animals appear to have some self-awareness; the
quantity depends on their intelligence. Conceivably, a very advanced
computer system could have a high degree of self-awareness. As with
consciousness, it is lack of information -- how the brain works, random
factors, etc. which makes self-awareness seem to be a very special
quality. In fact, it is a very simple, unremarkable characteristic.
M. Massimilla
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Date: 12 Oct 83 7:16:26-PDT (Wed)
From: harpo!eagle!mhuxi!mhuxl!ulysses!unc!mcnc!ncsu!fostel @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: RE: Physics and Intuition
Article-I.D.: ncsu.2367
I intend this to be my final word on the matter. I intend it to be
brief: as someone said, a bit more tolerance on this group would help.
From Laura we have a wonderful story of the intermeshing of physics and
religion. Well, I picked molecular physics for its avoidance of any
normal life experiences. Cosmology and creation are not in that catagory
quite so strongly because religion is an everyday thing and will lead to
biases in cosmological theories. Clearly there is a continuum from
things which are divorced from everyday experience to those that are
very tightly connected to it. My point is that most "hard" sciences
are at one end of the continuum while psychology is clearly way over
at the other end, by definition. It is my position that the rather
big difference between the way one can think about the two ends of the
spectrum suggests that what works well at one end may well be quite
inappropriate at the other. Or it may work fine. But there is a burden
of proof that I hand off to the rational psychologists before I will
take them more seriously than I take most psychologists. I have the same
attitude towards cosmology. I find it patently ludicrous that so many
people push our limited theories so far outside the range of applicability
and expect the extrapolation to be accurate. Such extrapoloation is
an interesting way to understand the failing of the theories, but to
believe that DOES require faith without substantiation.
I dislike being personal, but Laura is trying to make it seem black and
white. The big bang has hardly been proved. But she seems to be saying
it has. It is of course not so simple. Current theories and data
seem to be tipping the scales, but the scales move quite slowly and will
no doubt be straightened out by "new" work 30 years hence.
The same is true of my point about technical reasoning. Clearly no
thought can be entirely divorced from life experiences without 10
years on a mountain-top. Its not that simple. That doesn't mean that
there are not definable differences between different ways of thinking
and that some may be more suitable to some fields. Most psychologists
are quite aware of this problem (I didn't make it up) and as a result
purely experimental psychology has always been "trusted" more than
theorizing without data. Hard numbers give one some hope that it is
the world, not your relationship with a pet turtle speaking in your
work.
If anyone has anymore to say to me about this send me mail, please.
I suspect this is getting tiresome for most readers. (its getting
tiresome for me...) If you quote me or use my name, I will always
respond. This network with its delays is a bad debate forum. Stick to
ideas in abstration from the proponent of the idea. And please look
for what someone is trying to say before assuming thay they are blathering.
----GaryFostel----
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Date: 14 Oct 83 13:43:56 EDT (Fri)
From: Paul Torek <flink%umcp-cs@CSNet-Relay>
Subject: consciousness and the teleporter
From Michael Condict ...!cmcl2!csd1!condict
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. [...]
In spite of the fact that consciousness (I agree with the growing chorus) is
NOT an illusion, I see nothing wrong with using such a teleporter. Let's
take the case as presented in the sci-fi story (before Michael Condict rigs
the controls). A person disappears from (say) Earth and a person appears at
(say) Tau Ceti IV. The one appearing at Tau Ceti is exactly like the one
who left Earth as far as anyone can tell: she looks the same, acts the same,
says the same sort of things, displays the same sort of emotions. Note that
I did NOT say she is the SAME person -- although I would warn you not too
conclude too hastily whether she is or not. In my opinion, *it doesn't
matter* whether she is or not.
To get to the point: although I agree that consciousness needs something to
exist, there *IS* something there for it -- the person at Tau Ceti. On
what grounds can anyone believe that the person at Tau Ceti lacks a
consciousness? That is absurd -- consciousness is a necessary concomitant
of a normal human brain. Now there IS a question as to whether the
conscious person at Tau Ceti is *you*, and thus as to whether his mind
is *your* mind. There is a considerable philosophical literature on this
and very similar issues -- see *A Dialogue on Personal Identity and
Immortality* by John Perry, and "Splitting Self-Concern" by Michael B. Green
in *Pacific Philosophical Quarterly*, vol. 62 (1981).
But in my opinion, there is a real question whether you can say whether
the person at Tau Ceti is you or not. Nor, in my opinion, is that
question really important. Take the modified case in which Michael Condict
rigs the controls so that you are transported, yet remain also at Earth.
Michael Condict calls the one at Earth the "original", and the one at Tau
Ceti the "copy". But how do you know it isn't the other way around -- how
do you know you (your consciousness) weren't teleported to Tau Ceti, while
a copy (someone else, with his own consciousness) was produced at Earth?
"Easy -- when I walk out of the transporter room at Earth, I know I'm still
me; I can remember everything I've done and can see that I'm still the same
person." WRONGO -- the person at Tau Ceti has the same memories, etc. I
could just as easily say "I'll know I was transported when I walk out of the
transporter room at Tau Ceti and realize that I'm still the same person."
So in fairness, we can't say "You walk out of the transporter room at both
ends, with the original you realizing that something went wrong." We have
to say "You walk out of the transporter at both ends, with *the one at
Earth* realizing something is wrong." But wait -- they can't BOTH be you --
or can they? Maybe neither is you! Maybe there's a continuous flow of
"souls" through a person's body, with each one (like the "copy" at Tau Ceti
(or is it at Earth)) *seeming* to remember doing the things that that body
did before ...
If you acknowledge that consciousness is rooted in the physical human brain,
rather than some mysterious metaphysical "soul" that can't be seen or
touched or detected in any way at all, you don't have to worry about whether
there's a continuous flow of consciousnesses through your body. You don't
have to be a dualist to recognize the reality of consciousness; in fact,
physicalism has the advantage that it *supports* the commonsense belief that
you are the same person (consciousness) you were yesterday.
--Paul Torek, U of MD, College Park
..umcp-cs!flink
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End of AIList Digest
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