PATTIS@WASHINGTON.ARPA (08/14/84)
From: Richard Pattis <PATTIS@WASHINGTON.ARPA> Name the presidential candidate who wrote the following: It was in that mood, living day after day with this matter principally occuring in my mind, that I halted such peripheral considerations as the spur-of-the-moment Plotto simulation exemplified, and resolved to go directly to the crux of the matter of "artificial intelligence." It was simple enough for me to do. A knowledge of both analog and computer principles, philosophical rigor, and my competence in economics: it was a simple matter to lay out in my mind a worldwide network of task-oriented, linked computers performing production of all human needs, including the building of task-oriented computers like themselves. Such an array is the precondition for supposing that "artificial intelli- gence" in computers might be approximated, at least in the form of conscious powers of deduction. Since human consciousness and intelligence depend on what Kant terms the synthetic a apriori processes, and since there is no configuration of the indicated sorrt of model which could accommodate such synthesis, there is no way in which any form of computer could become willful in a human sense of willful intelligence. It was obvious, on less rigorous grounds, than no computer could synthesize intelligent behavior in the manner Minsky and others were approaching this. That was the simple case to prove. Minsky's problem was that he proceeded in ignorance of even a Feuerbachian model of the determination of intelligence. There is more, but it becomes less focused, and I became tired of typing. As a hint, the principal accomplishment of the author of this quotation is, "... that of being, by a large margin of advantage, the leading economist of the twentieth century to date." Rich