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AIList Digest Volume 5 Issue 159
AIList Digest Monday, 29 Jun 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 159
Today's Topics:
Future Directions - Drexler and Nanotechnology,
History - AI in the 13th Century & Otto Selz,
Binding - Computer Composition of Music
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Date: Mon, 22 Jun 87 11:03:03 EDT
From: Bruce Nevin <bnevin@cch.bbn.com>
Subject: nano-engineering
There is a good summary article in _Whole Earth Review_ (Spring 1987),
pp. 8-14: A Technology of Tiny Things, Nanotechnics and Civilization,
by K. Eric Drexler. The bio in the footnote at the beginning says
Drexler got his SB from MIT in interdisciplinary science, followed by a
Master's in Aeronautics and Astronautics also at MIT. Recently he
founded the MIT Nanotechnology Study Group to develop the science
described in the article and book. Some excerpts from the former:
Whatever is, is obviously possible. Life is. Therefore that
demonstrates the possibility of molecular machines able to build
other molecular machines--the essence of both life and a new
method called nanotechnology. . . .
Whatever obeys natural law is also possible. Science now
understands the laws of ordinary matter and energy well enough
for most engineering purposes. Nanotechnology will enable us to
build new kinds of things. Physical laws let us calculate what
some of these things will be able to do.
The basic idea of nanotechnology is straightforward. . . .
Molecular machines are simply machines made of molecular-scale
parts having carefully arranged atoms.
. . . Nanotechnology assemblers will be molecular machines that
grab reactive molecules and bring them together in a controlled
way, building up a complex structure a few atoms at a time.
. . .
There is no new science in nanotechnology, only new engineering.
The possibility of nanotechnology was implicit in the science
known over 30 years ago, though no one saw it then. During the
1940s and 1950s, biochemistry revealed more and more of the
molecular machinery of the cell. In 1959, physicist Richard
Feynman touched on a similar idea in a talk: he spoke of using
small machines to build smaller machines ( . . . and so on). He
suggested that the smallest machines would be able to "put atoms
down where a chemist says" to make a "chemical substance." But
Feynman didn't explain how these machines were to work, and said
they "will really be useless," because chemists will be able to
make whatever they want without them. Decades passed with
little followup.
[Molecular biology advanced, Drexler's work at MIT indicated in
winter of 1976 the possibility of "what we now call assemblers";
he describes several paths for evolution of nanotechnics from
present science and technology. --BN]
As you can see, the starting point will make little difference.
All roads lead to assemblers, and assemblers will let us make
almost anything we are clever enough to design.
. . .
In a world full of competing companies and governments, only
global disaster or global domination could block the advance of
technology. This seems to be a fundamental principle; if so, it
must guide our plans.
. . .
What can nanotechnology do for us? Almost anything we want, in
physical terms. Once we have the software to direct them,
replicating assemblers can build almost anything, including
more of themselves, without human labor. Because they will
handle matter atom by atom, as trees do, they can be as clean
as trees, or cleaner. They need not produce smoke or sludge or
toxic chemical byproducts.
. . .
One important application will be the further miniaturization of
computers. Detailed study shows that assemblers could build the
equivalent of a large, modern computer in about 1/1000 of the
volume of a typical human cell. This could be a mechanical
computer (they're easier to analyze than electronic computers),
but moving parts on this scale can be small and fast enough to
make the computer faster than today's electronic machines.
. . .
Drexler also writes at some length about the enormous potential for
danger and disruption of society and biosphere.
Our survival may depend on our ability to tell sense from
nonsense regarding a complex technology that doesn't exist yet.
The nonsense will be abundant, no matter what we do: any field
on the borders of science fiction, quantum mechanics, and
biology is well positioned to import a lot of prefabricated
crap; any field where experiments and experience aren't yet
possible is going to have great trouble getting rid of that
crap. When someone says "nanotechnology" and begins to expound,
beware!
. . . a political movement to deal with nanotechnology must be a
movement to guide advance, not to stop it. I've already argued
that attempts to stop it would be futile; here are some reasons
for thinking such efforts would be socially irresponsible.
I leave this and much more for the interested reader to follow up in the
Spring issue of WER.
(This same issue by the way has Shank's `Reality Club' contribution
on why math should not be taught in public schools. As you know from
his AI work, it cannot be because he dislikes math or is bad at it.)
Bruce Nevin
bn@cch.bbn.com
(This is my own personal communication, and in no way expresses or
implies anything about the opinions of my employer, its clients, etc.)
------------------------------
Date: 24 Jun 87 15:39 PDT
From: JJD.MDC@OFFICE-1.ARPA
Subject: Drexler and Nanotechnology
Sorry I missed the NPR report on K. Eric Drexler and _Engines of Creation_.
Here's some background:
The book _Engines of Creation_ was publixhed by Anchor Press / Doubleday in
1986. The excited foreword is by Marvin Minsky. I know from the copy that I
just checked out that Drexler discusses AI in the book, but I am not sure what
his vantage point is. At minimum, of course, is the potential of
nanotechnology as a way to build much denser hardware. I suspect that Drexler
also at least touches on the idea of this enabling a critical mass and
consciousness. This will come later. It's a good read.
The book was excerpted in the Spring 1987 issue of _Whole Earth Review_. This
article is provocative and has some good conceptual illustrations.
The cover bio of Drexler identifies him as a "Research Affiliate at the MIT
Space Systems Laboratory." He is pictured with his back to the camera, staring
at an imposing and eclectic pile of books and a terminal.
I first encountered Drexler in the pages of the Summer 1976 issue of
_CoEvolution Quarterly_ (ancestor of _Whole Earth Review_). The theme of that
issue (later extended as a book) was Gerard O'Neill's concept of space
colonization and industrialization. Drexler was a very articulate advocate who
was actually doing something about it. He was a graduate student at the time,
and had built a six-foot-long track that could electromagnetically launch a
bucket of water into a wall at 80 miles per hour. It was a demonstration of
the feasibility of a mass driver to be built on the moon and to launch 10
kilogram sacks of material to colony construction sites. He contributed to the
book that came from the initial article, demolishing his opponents with gleeful
arrogance (apparently since moderated, perhaps by exposure to audiences in the
last few years).
I suspect that Drexler has a general interest in big fixes in answer to
contemporary dilemmas, motivating his fascination with both space
industrialization and with nanotechnology. More specifically, his earlier
interest in space has probably driven his interest in nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology promises to revolutionize both the ways things are made, and
their resulting performance characteristics. It makes vast systems of
capital-intensive, high-performance technology seems more approachable.
I leave further analysis to the next century's graduate theses re: contemporary
intellectual history.
------------------------------
Date: 26 Jun 87 18:28:37 GMT
From: jbn@glacier.stanford.edu (John B. Nagle)
Subject: Re: AI in the 13th Century
A thorough discussion of the Ars Magna ("Great Art") of Ramon Lull
can be found in Martin Gardner's "Science - Good, Bad and Bogus" (ISBN
0-87975-144-4). The Great Art is basically a system for exhaustively
combining terms, using a stack of disks, each containing a set of related
terms. For example, one set of Lull's disks contained the following words:
1. God, creature, operation
2. difference, similarity, contrariety
3. beginning, middle, end
4. majority, equality, minority
5. affirmation, negation, doubt
In operation, one chooses one term from each set, more or less at random.
One can thus explore, Gardner writes, "such topics as the beginning and
end of God, differences and similarities of animals, and so on."
The Great Art provides no assistance in selecting useful combinations from
the many produced, or for doing anything with them once selected. It
provides only a means for enumerating the possibilities inherent in some
taxonomic scheme. So, while the Great Art may be useful as a prod
for creative thinking by humans, it does not provide anything more profound.
It does, though, generate the illusion of profundity, which provides much of
its appeal.
John Nagle
------------------------------
Date: 24 Jun 87 13:23:51 GMT
From: edwards@unix.macc.wisc.edu (mark edwards)
Subject: AI in the 13th Century
A number of people have asked about the reference to AI in the
13th Century. Well I finally dug up the ole notebook and picked
it out. Unfortunately all I have is a name. The name is
Ramon Lull
Since the book was in latin, very old and so forth I guess I thought
I'd never check it out. Apparently Ramon was a popular person in the
sciences, black magic and those sort of things. His name appears
with other terms like shamans in my notebook.
I hope that helps.
mark
--
edwards@unix.macc.wisc.edu
{allegra, ihnp4, seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!edwards
UW-Madison, 1210 West Dayton St., Madison WI 53706
------------------------------
Date: 24 Jun 87 17:03:34 GMT
From: duke!mps@mcnc.org (Michael P. Smith)
Subject: Re: AI in the 13th Century
In article <1654@uwmacc.UUCP> edwards@uwmacc.UUCP (mark edwards) writes:
>
> A number of people have asked about the reference to AI in the
> 13th Century. Well I finally dug up the ole notebook and picked
> it out. Unfortunately all I have is a name. The name is
>
> Ramon Lull
>
>
> Since the book was in latin, very old and so forth I guess I thought
> I'd never check it out. Apparently Ramon was a popular person in the
> sciences, black magic and those sort of things. His name appears
> with other terms like shamans in my notebook.
>
I'm no Lull expert, but here's part of an entry from W.L. Reese's
DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION (Humanities, 1980), p. 319:
\begin{quotation}
Lull, Raymond. 1236-1315.
Philosopher and missionary. Born in Palma, Majorca. Taught
several years at Paris. His goal was to state the truths Christianity
so succinctly that the infidels could not possibly deny them. To this
end he wrote the *Ars Magna*, a mechanical method of exhaustively
stating the possible relations of a topic. The method requires three
concentric circles divided into compartments. One circle is divided
into nine relevant subjects; a second circle is divided into nine
relevant predicates; the third circle is divided into nine questions:
whether? what? whence? why? how large? of what kind? when? where? how?
One circle is fixed; the others rotate, providing a complete series of
questions, and of statements in relation to them.
\end{quotation}
Lull is usually dismissed as a crackpot by historians, but had
influence on the likes of Descartes and Leibniz centuries later.
I believe that much of Lull's work is available in English translation.
No doubt some interesting comparisons can be drawn between Lull's
program and, say, conceptual dependency theory. But as to Mark's
claim that Lull used the term 'artificial intelligence', I suspect
that such usage occurs only in the mind of the translator.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael P. Smith "The world of the happy man is a different
ARPA: mps@duke.cs.duke.edu one from that of the unhappy man."
Wittgenstein
------------------------------
Date: 24 Jun 87 19:05:25 GMT
From: duke!jds@mcnc.org (Joseph D. Sloan)
Subject: Re: AI in the 13th Century
Martin Gardner devotes a chapter to Ramon Lull in
LOGIC, MACHINES AND DIAGRAMS, 2e, 1982, University
of Chicago Press.
Joe Sloan
jds@duke
------------------------------
Date: 25 Jun 87 14:03:37 GMT
From: nosc!humu!uhccux!stampe@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu (David Stampe)
Subject: Re: AI in the 13th Century
The nine questions of Ramon Lull's Ars Magna (whether? what? whence?
why? how large? of what kind? when? where? how?) seem to be what were
called the "modes of being" in the grammatical theories of the
"Modistae" during the middle ages. They were based ultimately on
Aristotle's Categories, which have been claimed during this century
(by Ryle?) to have been based on the Greek interrogative pronouns.
Regarding the similarities to conceptual dependency theory, it's
interesting that in *syntactic* dependency theory, in a phrase, it is
only the dependent member (adjunct, modifier, operator) that can be
interrogated vis a vis the independent (head, operand) member, not
vice versa.
Examples, with (Head (Adjunct)), and * for the bad cases:
(Verb (Object)) Q: Who does he like? A: Mary.
*Q: What he Mary? A: Likes her.
((Adj) Noun) Q: Which hat did she wear? A: The straw hat.
*Q: What straw did she wear? A: The hat.
((Adv) Adj) Q: How hot was it? A: Too hot.
*Q: Too what was it? A: Hot.
Etc. Typically the head is implied by the adjunct (e.g. to like Mary
is to like [someone], a straw hat is a hat, too hot is hot). That is,
adjuncts are rather like predicates. That is, they correspond to the
modes of being, the ways things can be.
There's not much new under the sun.
David Stampe, Linguistics, Univ. of Hawaii
uhccux!stampe@nosc.mil
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 21 Jun 87 19:24:42 +0300
From: NYSTERN%WEIZMANN.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu
Subject: Re: Re: Taking AI models and applying them to biology...
I have two comments to say;
a) As far as I understand from the article, Otto Selz has DIED
in 1943 at Auschwits (If one takes into account what Auschwits was
that period it seems quite logical) thus he couldn't publish his work in
1943 ... If one remembers what were the types of people who died in
Auschwits (I.E Jews) and if one takes into account that they expelled from
The Universities and Research Institutions from about 1933 (Hitlers
election as Germany's prime minister) then the only logical concultion
is that He didn't publish his theory after 1933 (since he was banned)
1943-1933=10 years (woow , I made it ...) which means he published his
theory before Turing or Shannon published theirs ...
WWII was probably the main reason for the lack of knowledge about his work.
(Remember that the war was ended 2 years later and the world had enough on
his mind than to remember Selz's theory ...)
BTW The commentation above isn't based on facts since I know very little
about his life and death (I may be wrong and will found out that he died
As a top Nazy SS officer due to cancer ... but that possiblity seems
redundant to me)
b) As far as I know AI is based on Mathematics ans Biology.
Both of those Sciences and many of the disciplines adopted by AI
scientists were formed a long time ago even without being influenced by
AI/computers (in matter of fact up until now the fields of Biology
and Computers wasn't combined together when matters of theory comes
only as a tool (calculation programs and DNA decoding algorythms)
Well to sum up my point I feel that the computer-science field will
benefit more from the work of hopfield then any theoretical axiome ...
The scince world has become too specific while I believe that combining all
forces together instead of working in paralel on the same topic would be more
fruitful for the science world and for the world (With one objection that
one field should not impose his theory on the other let, 1000 flowers grow
together, but TOGETHER). There is a Master grad. in weizmann who has done
his thesis in the vision field in the Department of Applied Math, His
'problem' is that his thesis relates to many fields (physics,neuro biology)
and not only to Applied Math moreover He has proved emphirically and cited
Famous researchers in this field that Math is redundant in this specific field.
Ofcourse no one like his thesis in the Math Department ... As far as I know
He will have his Master (got above 80 in the oral test) BUT how much will he
get about hsi work ? no one knows. His work is great but it doesn't fit into
the cateogries of our formal science. There's no (yet) a field named
Applied neuro-math or Applied psycho-physics or even Applied neuro-physics.
I've brought this story up to show 1) The situation in the science world
nowadays 2) to emphesize the trends of science as I see them 3) to back
up the notion that Applied Math and AI would benifit alot by examening works
of other science fields.
I believe that that's all.
------------------------------
Date: 21 Jun 87 19:42:03 GMT
From: sunybcs!rapaport@ames.arpa (William J. Rapaport)
Subject: Re: Computer composition of music
In article <2198@mmintl.UUCP> johnt@mmintl.UUCP (John Tangney) writes:
>Some of the researchers I read about (like Max
>Mathews, Lejaren Hiller, Iannis Xenakis, Stephen Smoliar to name
>a few off the top of my head) must still be out there.
Lejaren Hiller is Prof. of Music at SUNY Buffalo and an adjunct prof. in
our CS dept. His email address is muslah@buffalo.csnet
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
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