NGSTL1::EVANS%ti-eg.CSNET@RELAY.CS.NET (stair surfing - an exercise in) (10/28/86)
>In the last AI digest (V4 #226), Daniel Simon writes: > >>One question you haven't addressed is the relationship between intelligence and >>"human performance". Are the two synonymous? If so, why bother to make >>artificial humans when making natural ones is so much easier (not to mention >>more fun)? > >This is a question that has been bothering me for a while. When it is so much >cheaper (and possible now, while true machine intelligence may be just a dream) >why are we wasting time training machines when we could be training humans in- >stead. The only reasons that I can see are that intelligent systems can be made >small enough and light enough to sit on bombs. Are there any other reasons? > >Daniel Paul > >danny%ngstl1%ti-eg@csnet-relay First of all, I'd just like to comment that making natural humans may be easier (and more fun) for men, but it's not necessarily so for women. It also seems that once we get the procedure for "making artificial humans" down pat, it would take less time and effort than making "natural" ones, a process which currently requires at least twenty years (sometimes more or less). Now to my real point - I can't see how training machines could be considered a waste of time. There are thousands of useful but meaningless (and generally menial) jobs which machines could do, freeing humans for more interesting pursuits (making more humans, perhaps). Of more immediate concern, there are many jobs of high risk - mining, construction work, deep-sea exploration and so forth - in which machines, particularly intelligent machines, could assist. Putting intelligent systems on bombs is a minor use, of immediate concern only for its funding potentials. Debating the ethics of such use is a legitimate topic, I suppose, but condemning all AI research on that basis is not. Eleanor Evans evans%ngstl1%ti-eg@csnet-relay