colonel@gloria.UUCP (Col. G. L. Sicherman) (05/14/85)
> This business of sonnets and concertos can certainly be overlooked. > Just because I cannot write a concerto, and I probably could not even if I > wanted to, does not mean that I am not intellegent or not human. We'll grant that you're human and computers are not! There are many kinds of intelligence: evidently your musical intelligence is not high. But when we ask whether somebody or something "is intelligent," what do we mean? (I ignore the colloquial use of the word: "most of my students this year are not intelligent.") > However, I think the issue raises some valid questions that cannot be > dismissed so easily. Just how central to intelligence is this matter of > artistic ability? Even though I do not consider myself overly artistic, I can > appreciate the "beauty" of a particularly elegant or insightful mathimatical > proof, or of a well-writen computer program. This capacity for appreciation > also seems to be related to my ability to perform in these domains (I am > considered excellent at both). Is it possible that to make computer > programs that posses true expertise in a given field, we will have to > address these seemingly "artistic" problems? I'm glad you put quote marks around "beauty." Just what is "beauty," anyway? Take the computer-discovered proof of the isosceles triangle proposition: showing that the triangle is congruent to itself. To a classical geometer, the proof is ugly; to a high-school student it may be inscrutable; but a logician may find it elegant and beautiful. And the Four-Color Theorem! There's expertise without beauty for you! > Perhaps so. Lakoff and Johnson have shown that an ability to understand > metaphor, something usually considered a peripheral, aesthetic ability, may be > central to the matter of understanding natural language. Perhaps we do not > fully grasp the depth of connection between what we normally consider > aesthetic issues and matters of real intrest to AI. I do not regard metaphor as aesthetic. The listener is, unavoidably, a metaphor for the speaker. > Stuart Ferguson -- ucbvax!ferguson@ucbcory.Berkeley.ARPA -- Col. G. L. Sicherman ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel