RICKL%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA (10/29/83)
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perlis%umcp-cs%CSNet-Relay@sri-unix.UUCP (10/30/83)
From: Don Perlis <perlis%umcp-cs@CSNet-Relay>
From: BUCKLEY@MIT-OZ
-- of what relevance is the issue of time-behavior of an
algorithm to the phenomenon of intelligence, i.e., can
there be in principle such a beast as a slow,
super-intelligent program?
From: RICKL%MIT-OZ@mit-mc
gracious, isn't this a bit chauvinistic? suppose that ai is
eventually successful in creating machine intelligence,
consciousness, etc. on nano-second speed machines of the
future: we poor humans, operating only at rates measured in
seconds and above, will seem incredibly slow to them. will
they engage in debate about the relevance of our time- behavior
to our intelligence? if there cannot in principle be such a
thing as a slow, super-intelligent program, how can they avoid
concluding that we are not intelligent? -=*=- rick
It seems to me that the issue isn't the 'appearance' of intelligence of
one being to another--after all, a very slow thinker may nonetheless
think very effectively and solve a problem the rest of us get nowhere
with. Rather I suggest that intelligence be regarded as effectiveness,
namely, as coping with the environment. Then real-time issues clearly
are significant.
A supposedly brilliant algorithm that 'in principle' could decide what
to do about an impending disaster, but which is destroyed by that
disaster long before it manages to grasp that there is a disaster,or
what its dimensions are, perhaps should not be called intelligent (at
least on the basis of *that* event). And if all its potential behavior
is of this sort, so that it never really gets anything settled, then it
could be looked at as really out of touch with any grasp of things,
hence not intelligent.
Now this can be looked at in numerous contexts; if for instance it is
applied to the internal ruminations of the agent, eg as it tries to
settle Fermat's Last Theorem, and if it still can't keep up with its
own physiology, ie, its ideas form and pass by faster than its
'reasoning mechanisms' can keep track of, then it there too will fail,
and I doubt we would want to say it 'really' was bright. It can't even
be said to be trying to settle Fermat's Last theorem, for it will not
be able to keep that in mind.
This is in a sense an internal issue, not one of relative speed to the
environment. But considering that the internal and external events are
all part of the same physical world, I don't see a significant
difference. If the agent *can* keep track of its own thinking, and
thereby stick to the task, and eventually settle the theorem, I think
we would call it bright indeed, at least in that domain, although
perhaps a moron in other matters (not even able to formulate questions
about them).RICKL%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA (10/31/83)
r question we
have been chasing around is: ``can intelligence be regarded as survivability,
(or more generally as coping with an external environment)?''. In the strong
form this position equates the two, and this position seems to be too
strong. Amoebas cope quite well and have survived for unimaginably longer
than we humans, but are generally acknowledged to be un-intelligent (if
anyone cares to dispute this, please do). Survivability and coping with
the environment, alone, therefore fail to adequately capture our intuitions
of intelligence.
-=*=- rickJAY%USC-ECLC@sri-unix.UUCP (10/31/83)
From: Jay <JAY@USC-ECLC>
From: RICKL%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
...
the question we are really discussing seems to be: ``can an entity be
said to be intelligent in and of itself, or can an entity only be said
to be intelligent relative to some world?''. I don't think I believe
in "pure, abstract intelligence, divorced from the world".
...
another question we have been chasing around is: ``can intelligence be
regarded as survivability, (or more generally as coping with an
external environment)?''. [...]
I believe intelligence to be the ability to cope with CHANGES in the
enviroment. Take desert tortoises, although they are quite young
compared to amobea, they have been living in the desert some
thousands, if not millions of years. Does this mean they are
intelligent? NO! put a freeway through their desert and the tortoises
are soon dying. Increase the rainfall and they may become unable to
compete with the rabbits (which will take full advantage of the
increase in vegitation and produce an increase in rabbit-ation). The
ability to cope with a CHANGE in the enviroment marks intellignece.
All a tortoise need do is not cross a freeway, or kill baby rabbits,
and then they could begin to claim intellignce. A similar argument
could be made against intelligent amobea.
A posible problem with this view is that biospheres can be counted
intelligent, in the desert an increase in rainfall is handled by an
increase in vegetation, and then in herbivores (rabbits) and then an
increase in carnivores (coyotes). The end result is not the end of a
biosphere, but the change of a biosphere. The biosphere has
successfully coped with a change in its environment. Even more
ludicrous, an argument could be made for an intelligent planet, or
solar system, or even galaxy.
Notice, an organism that does not change when its environment
changes, perhaps because it does not need to, has not shown
intelligence. This is, of course, not to say that that particular
organism is un-intelligent. Were the world to become unable to
produce rainbows, people would change little, if at all.
My behavioralism is showing,
j'JBA%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA (10/31/83)
manages to convince an alien that he is intelligent, so the aliens immediately begin a purge. Who wants intelligent cockroaches? -- KIL]
blenko@rochester.UUCP (Tom Blenko) (11/01/83)
Interesting to see this discussion taking place among people (apparently) committed to an information-processing model for intelligence. I would be satisfied with the discovery of mechanisms that duplicate the information-processing functions associated with intelligence. The issue of real-time performance seems to be independent of functional performance (not from an engineering point of view, of course; ever tell one of your hardware friends to "just turn up the clock"?). The fact that evolutionary processes act on both the information-processing and performance characteristics of a system may argue for the (evolutionary) superiority of one mechanism over another; it does not provide prescriptive information for developing functional mechanisms, however, which is the task we are currently faced with. Tom
MINSKY%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA (11/02/83)
What I meant is that defining intelligence seems as pointless as defining "life" and then arguing whether viruses are alive instead of asking how they work and solve the problems that appear to us to be the interesting ones. Instead of defining so hard, one should look to see what there is. For example, about the loop-detecting thing, it is clear that in full generality one can't detect all Turing machine loops. But we all know intelligent people who appear to be caught, to some extent, in thought patterns that appear rather looplike. That paper of mine on jokes proposes that to be intelligent enough to keep out of simple loops, the problem is solved by a variety of heuristic loop detectors, etc. Of course, this will often deflect one from behaviors that aren't loops and which might lead to something good if pursued. That's life. I guess my complaint is that I think it is unproductive to be so concerned with defining "intelligence" to the point that you even discuss whether "it" is time-scale invariant, rather than, say, how many computrons it takes to solve some class of problems. We want to understand problem-solvers, all right. But I think that the word "intelligence" is a social one that accumulates all sorts of things that one person admires when observed in others and doesn't understand how to do. No doubt, this can be narrowed down, with great effort, e.g., by excluding physical; skills (probably wrongly, in a sense) and so forth. But it seemed to me that the discussion here in AILIST was going nowwhere toward understand intelligence, even in that sense. In other words, it seems strange to me that there is no public discussion of substantive issues in the field...
hakanson@orstcs.UUCP (11/03/83)
#R:sri-arpa:-1309000:orstcs:2600006:000:699
orstcs!hakanson Nov 2 10:21:00 1983
No, no, no. I understood the point as meaning that the faster intelligence
is merely MORE intelligent than the slower intelligence. Who's to say that
an amoeba is not intelligent? It might be. But we certainly can agree that
most of us are more intelligent than an amoeba, probably because we are
"faster" and can react more quickly to our environment. And some super-fast
intelligent machine coming along does NOT make us UNintelligent, it just
makes it more intelligent than we are. (According to the previous view
that faster = more intelligent, which I don't necessarily subscribe to.)
Marion Hakanson {hp-pcd,teklabs}!orstcs!hakanson (Usenet)
hakanson@{oregon-state,orstcs} (CSnet)ISAACSON%USC-ISI@sri-unix.UUCP (11/04/83)
From Minsky: That's what you get for trying to define things too much. Coming, as it does, out of the blue, your comment appears to negate the merits of this discussion. The net effect might simply be to bring it to a halt. I think that it is, inadvertent though it might be, unkind to the discussants, and unfair to the rest of us who are listening in. I agree. The level of confusion is not insignificant and immediate insights are not around the corner. However, in my opinion, we do need serious discussion of these issues. I.e., questions of subcognition vs. cognition; parallelism, "autonomy", and epiphenomena; algorithmic programability vs. autonomy at the subcognitive and cognitive levels; etc. etc. Perhaps it would be helpful if you give us your views on some of these issues, including your views on a good methodology to discussing them. -- JDI
rigney@uokvax.UUCP (11/09/83)
#R:sri-arpa:-1309400:uokvax:900005:000:1727 uokvax!rigney Nov 3 08:45:00 1983 Perhaps something on the order of "Intelligence enhances survivability through modification of the environment" is in order. By modification something other than the mere changes brought about by living is indicated (i.e. Rise in CO2 levels, etc. doesn't count). Thus, if Turtles were intelligent, they would kill the baby rabbits, but they would also attempt to modify the highway to present less of a hazard. Problems with this viewpoint: 1) It may be confusing Technology with Intelligence. Still, tool making ability has always been a good sign. 2) Making the distinction between Intelligent modifications and the effect of just being there. Since "conscious modification" lands us in a bigger pit of worms than we're in now, perhaps a distinction should be drawn between reactive behavior (reacting and/or adapting to changes) and active behavior (initiating changes). Initiative is therefore a factor. 3) Monkeys make tools(Antsticks), Dolphins don't. Is this an indication of intelligence, or just a side-effect of Monkeys having hands and Dolphins not? In other words, does Intelligence go away if the organism doesn't have the means of modifying its environment? Perhaps "potential" ability qualifies. Or we shouldn't consider specific instances (Is a man trapped in a desert still intelligent, even if he has no way to modify his environment.) Does this mean that if you had a computer with AI, and stripped its peripherals, it would lose intelligence? Are human autistics intelligent? Or are we only considering species, and not representatives of species? In the hopes that this has added fuel to the discussion, Carl ..!ctvax!uokvax!rigney ..!duke!uok!uokvax!rigney
ISAACSON%USC-ISI@sri-unix.UUCP (11/09/83)
>From Minsky:
...I think that the word "intelligence" is a social one
accumulates all sorts of things that one person
admires observed in others and doesn't understand how to
do...
In other words, it seems strange to me that there
is no public discussion of substantive issues in the
field...
Exactly... I agree on both counts. My purpose is to help
crystallize a few basic topics, worthy of serious discussion, that
relate to those elusive epiphenomena that we tend to lump under
that loose characterization: "Intelligence". I read both your LM
and Jokes papers and consider them seminal in that general
direction. I think, though, that your ideas there need, and
certainly deserve, further elucidation. In fact, I was hoping
that you would be willing to state some of your key points to
this audience.
More than this. Recently I've been attracted to Doug
Hofstadter's ideas on subcognition and think that attention
should be paid to them as well. As a matter of fact, I see
certain affinities between you two and would like to see a good
discussion that centers on LM, Jokes, and Subcognition as
Computation. I think that, in combination, some of the most
promising ideas for AI are awaiting full germination in those
papers.laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (11/12/83)
The other problem with the "turtles should be killing baby rabbits" definition of intelligence is that it seems to imply that killing (or at least surviving) is an indication of intelligence. i would rather not believe this, unless there is compelling evidence that the 2 are related. So far I have not seen the evidence. Laura Creighton utcsstat!laura
ags@pucc-k (Seaman) (11/15/83)
Faster = More Intelligent. Now there's an interesting premise... According to relativity theory, clocks (and bodily processes, and everything else) run faster at the top of a mountain or on a plane than they do at sea level. This has been experimentally confirmed. Thus it seems that one can become more intelligent merely by climbing a mountain. Of course the effect is temporary... Maybe this is why we always see cartoons about people climbing mountains to inquire about "the meaning of life" (?) Dave Seaman ..!pur-ee!pucc-k!ags
karl@trsvax.UUCP (11/20/83)
#R:sri-arpa:-1309000:trsvax:45200001:000:773
trsvax!karl Nov 9 19:13:00 1983
***** trsvax:net.ai / orstcs!hakanson / 9:53 pm Nov 4, 1983
No, no, no. I understood the point as meaning that the faster intelligence
is merely MORE intelligent than the slower intelligence. Who's to say that
an amoeba is not intelligent? It might be. But we certainly can agree that
most of us are more intelligent than an amoeba, probably because we are
"faster" and can react more quickly to our environment. And some super-fast
intelligent machine coming along does NOT make us UNintelligent, it just
makes it more intelligent than we are. (According to the previous view
that faster = more intelligent, which I don't necessarily subscribe to.)
Marion Hakanson {hp-pcd,teklabs}!orstcs!hakanson (Usenet)
hakanson@{oregon-state,orstcs} (CSnet)
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