marcel@uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU (03/05/86)
WHEN: 12:00 noon, Wednesday, March 5th WHERE: Canterbury House, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign TOOLS BEYOND TECHNIQUE Marcel Schoppers Dept of Computer Science U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign In this talk I will propose yet another way to characterize AI, but one which I hope captures the intuitions of AI researchers: that AI is the attempt to liberate tools/machines from absolute dependence on human control. That done, I will suggest some achievements which should, according to this characterization of AI, demonstrate the success of AI work. Importantly, both the characterization and those crucial achievements contain no comparison to human capabilities. I therefore maintain that several contemporary arguments for and against the future success of AI are at once fallacious and beside the point. Among others: the AI community's claim that "brains are computers too" is hardly necessary and certainly not scientific, while Weizenbaum's "maybe computers can think, but they shouldn't" is self-defeating. On the issue of whether artificial intelligence will ever be achieved I will not commit myself, but at least my characterization provides a down-to-earth criterion. ---------------------- A paper on this subject (in the socio-communications literature): "A perspective on artificial intelligence in society" Communications 9:2 (december 1985).