notes@ucbcad.UUCP (11/03/83)
#N:ucbesvax:1100004:000:1593 ucbesvax!turner Nov 3 01:57:00 1983 It's surprising to me that people are still speaking in terms of machine intelligence unconnected with a notion of a physical host that must interact with the real world. This is treated as a trivial problem at most (I think Ken Laws said that one could attach any kind of sensing device, and hence (??) set any kind of goal for a machine). So why does Hubert Dreyfus treat this problem as one whose solution is a *necessary*, though not sufficient, condition for machine intelligence? But is it a solved problem? I don't think so--nowhere near, from what I can tell. Nor is it getting the attention it requires for solution. How many robots have been built that can infer their own physical limits and capabilities? My favorite example is the oft-quoted SHRDLU conversation; the following exchange has passed for years without comment: -> Put the block on top of the pyramid -> I can't. -> Why not? -> I don't know. (That's not verbatim.) Note that in human babies, fear of falling seems to be hardwired. It will still attempt, when old enough, to do things like put a block on top of a pyramid--but it certainly doesn't seem to need an explanation for why it should not bother after the first few tries. (And at that age, it couldn't understand the explanation anyway!) SHRDLU would have to be taken down, and given another "rule". SHRDLU had no sense of what it is to fall down. It had an arm, and an eye, but only a rather contrived "sense" of its own physical identity. It is this sense that Dreyfus sees as necessary. --- Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)