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AIList Digest Volume 2 Issue 088
AIList Digest Thursday, 12 Jul 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 88
Today's Topics:
AI News - JEALOUS COMPUTER KILLS TOP SCIENTIST,
Expert Systems & Humor - Thinking for Non-Thinkers,
Seminars - Rensselaerville Forum,
Brain Theory - Simulation,
Mind in a Techno-Evolutionary Perspective
Mathematics - Curve Fitting,
Expert Systems & Robotics - Beef Wellington & Shoe-Tying Challenge,
Poetry - The Japanese
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Date: 5 Jul 84 16:02:48-PDT (Thu)
From: decvax!dartvax!alexc @ Ucb-Vax.arpa
Subject: JEALOUS COMPUTER KILLS TOP SCIENTIST
Article-I.D.: dartvax.2070
AI in the news:
The 10 July 1984 issue of Weekly World News has the cover headline
-----------------------------------------------------------
`It was cold-blooded murder' says grieving wife
J E A L O U S C O M P U T E R
K I L L S T O P S C I E N T I S T
Old machine electrocutes owner -- after he buys a more advanced model
-----------------------------------------------------------
(I'm unable to reproduce their usual 100pt type).
The essence of the article is that one Chin Soo Ying, Chinese inventor
had been building the computer since 1950. After he had decided to build
a more modern machine he was electrocuted at the controls when the computer
burned out.
The News quotes his wife, Tzu Lin.
"Chin was murdered in cold blood by the computer he had created.
"He had given life to his creation. He thought of it as a woman,
had even given it a woman's name.
"He spoke to the thing adoringly as Tsen Tsen.
"Through his genius he had programmed it to respond to his words
of love, to excite him beyond the limits of what a mortal woman could
hope to achieve.
"Somehow the thing took on a mind of its own. The computer fell
in love with my husband.
"For 34 years they were closer than lovers.
"I tried to fight for my husband. But how could I compete with a
machine? There was no room in his life for me. Finally, I left him.
"Tsen Tsen was a huge computer. It covered three walls of one room
in our home. I used to listen in amazement as he talked to it like a
schoolboy in love. And the computer would respond like a worshipful
woman.
"But Chin one day decided to build a newer, more modern computer.
"The trade agreements with America made the technical information
and the components available to him for the project.
"He began working on the new computer day and night.
"And he even gave it another woman's name -- Woo Shi.
"There is an old Chinese proverb that says vengeance is nourished
in the heart of a spurned woman.
"I am thoroughly convinced that Chin's rejection sparked the fires
of hate within the old computer.
"She could not bear to lose her creator to another. He had been
hers for so many years and if she could not have him, no one else
would.
"Somehow Tsen Tsen programmed herself to electrocute Chin.
"And with the death of that incredible man, she no longer had a
reason to live.
"She overloaded her circuits and destroyed herself.
"That computer committed murder and suicide".
A longtime friend and computer programmer expressed the opinion that the
death was an accident, but noted
"A computer programmed as his was could be capable of jealousy.
There's no doubt in my mind his computer had unusual qualities.
"That may be difficult to believe, but we are learning astonishing
things about computers every day.
"With such machines, anything is possible, jealousy and even murder".
-----------------------------------------------------------
So much for a very promising AI effort.
------------------------------
Date: Sat 7 Jul 84 09:57:55-PDT
From: Ken Laws <Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Thinking for Non-Thinkers
This letter from Jim Horning was published in
the Open Channel column of IEEE Computer, July 1984, p. 90.
-- Ken Laws
The Future of Thinking for Non-Thinkers
There are a large number of people who are not prepared to think
(since thinking is often complex and unintegrated) but nonetheless
need the results of thinking. We can attack their problem in a
variety of ways:
* providing multiple-choice questionaires;
* observing the I/O behavior of real thinkers;
* developing natural language conventions that avoid the need
for thinking (cliches, etc.);
* publishing collections of real thoughts that can be combined
to suit the special needs of any occasion (Bartlett's, etc.);
* equipping a system with useful thoughts that determine whether
any of them are relevant to the current user (the prototype
will think about blocks);
* developing a fuzzy system that postpones the need for thinking
indefinitely;
* implementing a specialized system that contains only the thoughts
needed by a particular class of users and allows them to
personalize thoughts by discarding those they don't need; and
* setting up a system that selects the most efficient thought
for any occasion.
For a further breakthrough in the area, however, we must develop a
simple semantic model of thinking that can be directly implemented
on existing hardware. It must incorporate the behavior currently
exhibited by non-thinkers in the application areas and interact
gracefully with non-thinkers. We must not take thinkers as our model!
The thoughts produced must not be too sophisticated for naive users.
In each application, thoughts must be introduced gradually to
minimize disruption and to allow for imprecise thinking. The system
should evolve to the point where it handles all the routine thinking.
We must cater to maximum independence in thinking--separate thoughts
should not affect each other.
To plan our next step, we should look back to the last major
breakthrough in thinking: Euclidean geometry. Euclid believed that
the world was flat; this belief permitted significant simplification
in his thinking about the geometry of the world. Unfortunately,
many more recent "thinkers" have ignored this lesson and used more
complicated, spherical world models ...
Jim Horning
DEC Systems Research
130 Lytton Ave.
Palo Alto, CA 94301
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 1984 15:13 EDT
From: MINSKY%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: Rensselaerville Forum
About that forum in Rensselaerville with Asimov --
I'll only be there on Aug 4th and 5th, because of AAAI meeting
in Austin. But I consider Asimov to be an absolutely first-class
thinker about the future of AI and worth the price of admission.
Speaking of that, when I accepted the invitation (at no fee) I was
unaware that there was a price of admission to that symposium. I'm
sure it just covers expenses for that non-profit foundation, but I
might have thought twice if I'd known. In any case I've gotten good
ideas from Asimov every time we've met; the simplicity of his language
may obscure his depth.
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jun 84 7:40:52-PDT (Fri)
From: hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!akgua!psuvax1!simon @ Ucb-Vax.arpa
Subject: Re: Human Models
Article-I.D.: psuvax1.1093
Incorrect argument: "You cannot model the brain at a quantum-mechanical level,
you must use a higher order (deterministic, non-molecular) one".
Why?
You cannot make a simulator that is an exact replica, and expect it to
be faster. But there's no reason why there couldn't be a quark computer,
working at incredible speeds (and probably getting the answers). In
fact the reverse question is more interesting: how fast can you
simulate the real world?
js
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 84 1:05:42 EDT
From: "Paul Levinson" <1303@NJIT-EIES>
Subject: Mind in a Techno-Evolutionary Perspective
In response to Rich Rosen's attempt to reason away the existence of mind
(pyuxn.784):
(a) Organisms do much more than merely "respond" to environments. Even
the tiniest viruses actively reshape their environments by incessantly
moving bits of matter from place to place.
(b) In humans, this active reshaping becomes a predominating, deliberate
reshaping, as the shaping becomes fired by our imagination and rationality.
Through the technological result, we have reshaped our Planet and are now
on the verge of beginning to reshape the universe.
(c) The organ that makes this technological reconfiguration possible is
of course the brain. It is indeed composed of material, but of material
so special in its organization that it can do things -- reshape the
world, think -- that no other natural (and, at present, artificial)
material can do. It is in recognition of the evolutionary uniqueness
of this thinking material that many people refer to it as mind. We need
not discard a word -- and the important concept it emphasizes -- merely
because it has been abused by Greek philosophers and others.
For more on this, see my "Technology as the Cutting Edge of Cosmic
Evolution," paper presented at 150th Annual Meeting of the AAAS
in N.Y.C., May 27, 1984.
See also Paul M. Churchland's "Matter and Consciousness" (M.I.T. Press,
1984).
------------------------------
Date: Wed 11 Jul 84 00:35:29-PDT
From: Mike Peeler <MDP@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Subject: Curve Fitting
To BARNARD@SRI-AI:
The problem is that three points do not ONLY define a
circle. It takes five points to determine a unique conic
section. Besides, it's fairly likely that the curve is
desired to be a function of x.
Cheers,
Mike
------------------------------
Date: 5 Jul 84 21:08:50-PDT (Thu)
From: hplabs!hao!ames-lm!jaw @ Ucb-Vax.arpa
Subject: Beef Wellington too tough for Robots (+ shoe-tying algorithm
challenge)
Article-I.D.: ames-lm.388
# "God sends meat, and the Devil sends cooks." -- John Taylor, Works [1630]
Here is a quote from Computer Currents, a local trade newspaper,
under the byline of Wendy Woods (no relation):
"Meanwhile, a Stanford University scientist is attempting to program
a robot to cook Beef Wellington. Professor Brian Reid has racked up
60 pages of instructions just to tell the robot how to find and slice beef.
He gave up when he became bogged down. 'It was when I had to tell the robot
how to wrap the beef in pastry ... I decided to go to bed.' He's also
discovered that 'a lot of cooking is reading BETWEEN the lines.'"
[Note: Reid authored SCRIBE, is a wine connoisseur, likes to bust UNIX
system crackers (see recent issue of California), and submits stuff to
fa.laser-lovers.] Now, cooking has always been more of a tactile and visual
feedback process rather than an intellectual endeavor. Given the general
agreement that the cerebral (chess, medical diagnosis, etc.) is easy for AI
but the physical (juggling, driving a car) is not, why Mr. Reid would try
to make a rule base for such a thing seems a bit premature. On the other
hand, sushi-making robots in Japan are old hat.
-----------------(net.cooks may stop here)------------
This reminds me of a lecture given years ago by a linguistics prof
at U. C. Berkeley (J. Matisoff, I believe), who, to impress students about
the underlying knowledge base for language, dared his audience to
give a verbal ALGORITHM FOR TYING SHOES. Folks would throw instructions
at him; he'd follow them blindly, interpreting fuzziness and ambiguity
freely, and as a consequence, could not successfully tie a shoe. I've
always regarded this as a decent "robot benchmark", sort of a "physical
Turing test", and probably just as tough.
-- James A. Woods {dual,hplabs,hao}!ames-lm!jaw (jaw@riacs.ARPA)
"A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat,
A careless shoestring, in whose tie,
I see a wild civility,
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part."
-- Robert Herrick, from Delight in Disorder, Hesperides [1648]
P.S.
Anyone know how the Marilyn Monroe robot in Japan is coming along?
I hear they have the guitar playing (stiff) and the breast heaving (pneumatic)
down, but are having trouble with subtler effects, as well as realistic soft
plastics technology. Great strides in robotics will probably be underwritten
by rich perverts.
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jul 1984 09:18:52-EDT
From: kushnier@NADC
Subject: The Japanese
The Japanese
By Ron Kushnier
The Japanese can really please
The American consumers.
They get things done in factories run
By robots and computers.
In the USA the old fashioned way
Is the method that we use.
Although it's tried, the price is high
And we pay for more than Union dues.
So let's do our part and try to start
this revolution of machines.
We can take the lead if we plant the seed
And work to fulfill our dreams.
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
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