Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
AIList Digest Volume 6 Issue 027
AIList Digest Friday, 5 Feb 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 27
Today's Topics:
Philosophy - Self-Conscious Code and the Chinese Room,
Applications - Nanotechnology, DNA Sequencing
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 1 Feb 88 18:59:19 GMT
From: bwk@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Barry W. Kort)
Reply-to: bwk@mbunix (Barry Kort)
Subject: Re: Self-conscious code and the Chinese room
Jorn Berger identifies an important characteristic of an intelligent
system: namely the ability to learn and evolve its intelligence.
In thinking about artificial intelligence, I like to draw a distinction
between a sapient system and a sentient system. A sapient system reposes
knowledge, but does not evolve. A sentient system adds to its abilities
as it goes along. It learns.
If the Chinese Room not only applied the rules for manipulating the
squiggles and squoggles, but also evolved the rules themselves so
as to improve its ability to synopsize a story, then we would be more
sympathetic to the suggestion that the room was intelligent.
Here is where the skeleton key comes in. In computer programming, there
is no inherent taboo that prevents a program from modifying its own code.
Most programmers religiously avoid such practice, because it usually leads
to suicidal outcomes. But there are good examples of game-playing
programs that do evolve their heuristic rules based on experience.
Jacob Bronoswki has said that if man is any kind of machine, he is
a learning machine. I think that Minsky would agree.
Now if we can just work out the algorithms for learning...
--Barry Kort
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 88 6:32:03 PST
From: jlevy.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Newton and Nanotechnology
Point well-taken, friends. I just got carried away with the analogy.. Next time
better.
References
AIList V6 #23 - Newton, Nanotechnology, Philosophy
------------------------------
Date: 4 Feb 88 19:31:14 GMT
From: moss!odyssey!gls@rutgers.edu (g.l.sicherman)
Subject: Re: ailist as forum
> >........ This has to be the only forum in the civilized world which allows
> >such claims to be perpetrated without receiving equal portions of ridicule
> >and abuse. Can it not be stopped?
>
> Obviously, ailist IS a forum where ridicule and abuse is permitted.
> Interestingly, in his book Drexler calls for setting up public forums
> where ideas of alleged scientific merit can be scrutinized openly and
> subjected to ridicule if such is deemed appropriate.
As the saying goes, freedom of the press is great ... if you have a
press. Now we have the Net. Let's see whether the people who have
all always paid lip service to free speech will stand by the real thing!
Personally, I'm glad to see scholarship get a chance to evolve from an
academic power game to an open group activity for all.
-:-
"Hey! My cigarettes are gone!"
"Sorry, master. I must obey the First Law of Robotics, you know."
--
Col. G. L. Sicherman
...!ihnp4!odyssey!gls
------------------------------
Date: 1 Feb 88 17:49:18 GMT
From: umix!umich!eecs.umich.edu!dwt@uunet.UU.NET (David West)
Reply-to: umix!umich!eecs.umich.edu!dwt@uunet.UU.NET (David West)
Subject: Re: intelligent nanocomupters
In article <8801251914.AA24568@LANL.GOV> t05rrs%mpx1@LANL.GOV
(Dick Silbar) writes:
>...to accomplish a century of progress in one hour." I am reminded of a novel
>some years back by Robert Forward, "Dragon's Egg", in which just that did
>happen in a civilization living on the surface of a neutron star.
Within that novel, no simulation was involved; the civilization "naturally" ran
that fast because the dominant forces in its material basis were baryonic
("strong nuclear") rather than coulomb ("electromagnetic").
-Davi.
------------------------------
Date: 1 Feb 88 18:22:46 GMT
From: umix!umich!eecs.umich.edu!dwt@uunet.UU.NET (David West)
Subject: Re: Intelligent Nanocomputers
Let me be quite clear: in my earlier posting I intended to ridicule neither
Eric Drexler nor the idea of molecular machinery. I *did* intend to ridicule
the idea that meaningful simulation is possible in the absence of sufficient
knowledge and understanding of the system one is allegedly simulating.
-David West
------------------------------
Date: 2 Feb 88 03:12:09 GMT
From: yunexus!unicus!craig@uunet.UU.NET (Craig D. Hubley)
Reply-to: craig@unicus.com (Craig D. Hubley)
Subject: Re: Intelligent Nanocomputers
Article-I.D.: unicus.2152
>In article <8801180618.AA08132@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> GODDEN@gmr.COM writes:
>> [...] the book >Engines of Creation< by K. Eric Drexler of MIT. [...]
>>it is not necessary to first understand intelligence. All one has to do is
>>simulate the brain [...] a complete hardware simulation of the brain can be
>>done [...] in the space of one cubic centimeter [...] h a machine could then
>>just be allowed to run and should be able to accomplish a man-year of
>>work in ten seconds.
>
>The breathtaking simplicity of the idea is awesome. Of course, some
>technological advances will be necessary for its realization, but note that
>to attain them, it is not necessary to understand technology ... all one has
>to do is simulate its development. A complete hardware simulation of the
>U.S. technological enterprise can be done in the space of one cubic meter
>(see appendix A) ... such a machine could then just be allowed to run, and
>should be able to accomplish a century of progress in one hour.
The bounding factor on progress thus becomes imagination. One could
argue that this has always been the case anyway. The human race's
primary occupation would then become dreaming up strange ideas for
it's computers to chew on, prove/disprove, design and build.
This seems almost natural, since our primary occupation has changed
over the past three hundred years from manual labour through
operating machines to moving information around.
The so-called `Third Wave' of information technologies has only
recently (within the last ten years) been widely recognized as such.
It seems that you only sees the waves as they wash over you.
Drexler's arguments, for those of you who haven't read the book,
are broadly-based and in places expressionistic, though his appendices
spell out in some detail his reasoning, and several chapters contain
a sort of `question and answer' section where what must be the most
commonly asked skeptical questions are themselves addressed.
This is an intriguing technique of `compressing discourse' that
more controversial books might benefit from, that is, an explicit
answer to questions that otherwise would nag and bias the reader.
If the answers are unsatisfactory, so be it. At least they are
there to refute.
I think it noteworthy that I've seen Drexler's name and book mentioned
in several electronic and a few conversational forums, and not once
did I ever hear an argument that he didn't explicitly address in his book.
Nor have I heard a credible refutation of any of his points. On the contrary,
I have heard nothing but enthusiastic recommendation of the book from those
who've read it and receptivity to the ideas from individuals qualified in
the specific fields concerned, from computing to molecular biology to
business. Some of these individuals were very much skeptics at heart.
I guess I won't be comfortable until I hear somebody *flame* the damn book!
After all, it's annoying to have to just wait around wondering if I'll
ever be able to solve problems just by thinking of them, live forever
(barring accidents) in whatever environment I choose, and live in a
body fortified by a truly formidable defense and immune system.
If it's coming soon, I don't see much point in doing anything other than
working on it, for those of us in technical fields. To solve the
pollution, resource, food problems at once as a side effect!
I'm afraid that reading this book puts truly big ideas into one's head.
Don't read it unless your head is big enough to contain them. :-)
And won't *someone* please flame the book!!!
Craig Hubley, Unicus Corporation, Toronto, Ont.
craig@Unicus.COM (Internet)
{uunet!mnetor, utzoo!utcsri}!unicus!craig (dumb uucp)
mnetor!unicus!craig@uunet.uu.net (dumb arpa)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1988 01:25 EST
From: MINSKY%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Nanotechnology
Those reactionaries who were flaming at Drexler's ideas ought to read
this week's issue of Nature. A group at IBM San Jose Almaden Research
Center have used a scanning tunneling microscope to pin a single
molecule of dimethyl phthalate to the surface of a graphite sheet and
then to rearrange its atoms, and see the results. The exact details
of the rearrangement are not yet controllable, but the aromatic
subgroups are clearly visible. (Dimethyl phthalate is about the size
of two benzene reings.) The operations can be done at sub-microsecond
speed, using the order of .1 microsecond pulses at 3.5 volts.
Progress in this direction certainly seems faster than almost everyone
would have expected. I will make a prediction: In the next few years,
various projects will request and obtain large budgets for the human
genome sequencing" enterprise. In the meantime, someone will succeed
in stretching single strands of protein, DNA, or RNA across
crystalline surfaces, and sequence them, using the STM method.
Eventually, it should become feasible to do such sequencing at
multi-kilocycle rates, so that an entire chromosome could be logged in
a few days.
Using this system for constructive operations lies further in the
future; however, it might sooner be feasible to introduce controlled
damage to genetic elements. This would, for example, make it easy to
inactivate particular gene-promoters and, thus, to remove a bad gene.
Incidentally, these operations can be performed inside a drop of
liquid (the STM does not need a vacuum). So it ought to be feasible to
put the altered genetic material back into a cell.
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
********************
