wbp@hou2d.UUCP (W.PINEAULT) (08/14/84)
"Saudi Arabia has virtually no crime rate," is what the commercial told me about 30 times before I realized what they are really saying. I understand what having virtually no crime is, and also a very low crime rate is within my grasp. But virtually no crime rate is a very odd construction. If a place has no crime rate then this means that the statistics are not gathered and that's O.K too. If the crime rate is virtually non-existent then it indeed exists, but is in a state of "almost non-being" which may mean that for all practical purposes it does not exist, but is known to a select few who will tell no-one. (Or may be a reflection of their different system of justice!) Are virtual rates calculated on virtual machines, and does one need either transcendental or imaginary numbers to express them? Seriously, what would a program do with such a sentence? And even more interesting, would a sophisticated program have any problem with it, and could it not even see a problem with it as I am sure millons of people did not see one! Submitted for your approval, Wayne Pineault (hou2d!wbp)
abh@ccivax.UUCP (Andrew X. Hudson) (08/15/84)
This kind of sentence structure is highly dependent upon perspective and context. If a problem is found on first parse perhaps a simple substitution by synonym would do the trick. In this case substituting 'nearly' for 'virtually' would do the trick. Contextually, though, the program would have to know that rates are for numerical comparison. In which case one of the better semantic results might be "nearly no crime rate in comparison." The reasons for which people interpret the same written words would be an interesting endeavor. Andrew Hudson -- "Freedom of choice is what you got Freedom from choice is what you want" - DEVO ...[rlgvax | decvax | ucbvax!allegra]!rochester!ritcv!ccivax!abh
CMP.WERNER@UTEXAS-20.ARPA (08/30/84)
From: Werner Uhrig <CMP.WERNER@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>
RE: "Saudi Arabia has virtually no crime rate," (Olympic commercial)
Every time I heard it, there was this little alarm going off in my head
saying: "Think about it. There is something wrong here." To which my
semi-automatic stress-reduction program (always running in the "background")
responded: "Don't think about it. This is just another unimportant question
which, at most, is going to mess up the priorities of other, more important
tasks you have to worry about."
Of course, now Wayne has found the "weak spot" in my 'semi-automatic ...'
Turning to Bantam for enlightenment, I find:
virtual [ML virtualis]
adj existing in effect though not in name or fact
virtually adv almost; for the most part
And, out of habit, I double-check in Webster (the Time-freeby with nearly
unreadable typeset) and get rewarded with:
virtual adj equivalent to, though somewhat different or deficient
- virtuality, n.
That didn't put me at ease at all, and I grabbed the "New American Computer
Dictionary" (by Ken Porter) .... well, excuse me, the computer was involved
in presenting me with Wayne's article, right ?
virtual Giving an appearance of being without actually; an important
concept in medium- to large-scale data-processing systems,
in which virtual techniques "trick" the computer system or
a program into "believing" that there are more resources
available than there actually are. For further discussion,
see 'virtual machine', 'virtual storage'
Aha, me thinks, the Saudis must have applied a new police technique, where
something or someone is doing some 'tricky' stuff ... but wait, '... being
without actually' ??? Wasn't it the other way around? Better check that
in German - and Langenscheidt says...:
virtual dem Wesen nach, eigentlich
well, that doesn't help much, so I do a 'reverse check' to see what I come
up with (an important technique. with often surprising results, remember
the first Russian automatic translations???)
eigentlich (genau) proper; (tatsaechlich) actual; (wirklich) true, real;
(dem Wesen nach) virtual;
adv properly; actually; really; (genau gesagt) properly
speaking; 'das ~e London' London proper; 'Ich bin ~ froh'
AmF I am sort of glad; 'was wollen Sie ~?' what do you want?
See what I mean? Is it 'real' now or 'virtual'? 'What do you want?'
Well, you have to endure my excursion into Spanish, too, but I spare you the
Latin.: 'Diccionario Larousse del Espanol Moderno' says:
virtual adj Posible, que no tiene efecto actual. || 'Fis' Que tiene
existencia aparente pero no real: 'imagen, objecto virtual'
virtualidad f. Posibilidad.
(dabbling in this 'foreign' mumble makes me wish that everyone had a Mac
so I could use the proper foreign characters, like 'Umlauts' in German, etc.
of course, there'd still be the 'minor' problem of making the main-frames
cooperate, of course .....)
What's the point of all this? Well, that's the ultimate test for AI.
You folks can go off now to write a program which will understand, when
the Arabs and I together throw our hands up into the air and say:
WELL, YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEANT TO SAY .....
But seriously now, folks ....
Maybe, DWIM is the real test of artificial intelligence, no more worries
about proper spelling, syntax, or semantics. No more error messages
from compilers, no more bugs in programs. For that matter, no more machines
with a habit of crashing. Why limit ourselves to require AI to be able to do
what we humans can do? Our 'REAL' intelligence is so bug-ridden that we
are on the verge of self-extinction as a result of our progress. What I'd
like to see is a Master-Robot of the world, programmed to DWIM (do what I mean)
with one overriding GOAL:
BUT NO MATTER WHAT I SAY OR DO - DON'T ALLOW ME TO SELF-DESTRUCT !!!
The idea that the human drive to survive has left us with 'defensive'
weapons which will most likely guarantee our ultimate and definite
demise from this universe makes me want to 'stop the world and get off'.
It makes me SO angry to know that most of this AI-stuff is being developed
to make better instruments of killing and destruction (looked at who's
doing the funding, lately?) - and so sad at the same time, knowing that
the last thing the people doing the developing want, is to help blowing
up the world, or any small part of it, for that matter. I am afraid that
the AI-community will find itself in a similar situation one day, as the
nuclear phycisists, asking themselves the question:
"But how could we have prevented it?" There is one thing to be learnt
from the Nueremberg trials after WW2: There is no sympathy earned with
this statement.
BTW, for all you Commie-hunters out there, I'm as suspicious as the next fellow
of Russian intensions, but I think that these days it's more likely that some
lunatic from some smaller country (no need to focus on anyplace in particular,
really) will light the match which will lead to the ultimate explosion.
What I am concerned about is, is the fact that we all cooperated in developing
the technology which makes the blast so effective and deadly. And ....
'being sorry' isn't going to do a damn bit of good !