[comp.ai] Intelligent Rooms

dredick@bbn.com (Barry Kort) (06/28/90)

In article <22928@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> llama@eleazar.dartmouth.edu
(Joseph A. Francis) writes:

->Also, this system as a whole must be able to learn new Chinese words, learn
->how to play crazy eights and tic-tac-toe, and formulate opinions on the
->validity of Searle's CR argument, etc...  The inards of CR are an 
->extremely active, complicated, and evolving place.

Indeed.  It doesn't make much sense to talk about an intelligent system whose
knowledge base is static.  The acquisition of knowledge over time (learning)
is an important feature of intelligent beings, be they made of silicon or
made of meat.  The challenge for AI and Cognitive Science is to learn how
to make the learning process efficient.  I want my CR to be a first-class
scientist.

--Barry Kort

Barry Kort                       bkort@bbn.com
Visiting Scientist
BBN Labs

rolandi@sparc9.hri.com (Walter Rolandi) (06/29/90)

In article <57861@bbn.BBN.COM>, dredick@bbn.com (Barry Kort) writes:
>
> Indeed.  It doesn't make much sense to talk about an intelligent system whose
> knowledge base is static.  The acquisition of knowledge over time (learning)
> is an important feature of intelligent beings, be they made of silicon or
> made of meat.  The challenge for AI and Cognitive Science is to learn how
> to make the learning process efficient. 
>

This ability is more than an important feature of intelligent beings.
Learning is a process, inferred from the observation of behavioral change,
which as an explanatory construct, *accounts for* intelligent behavior.

AI folks would be better off if they worried less about what knowledge *is*
and more about how a machine might acquire the behaviors from which the 
existence of knowledge is inferred.  Knowledge is what knowledge does.





              ***************************************
              *          Walter G. Rolandi          *
              *        Horizon Research, Inc.       *
              *           1432 Main Street          *
              *       Waltham, MA  02154  USA       *
              *            (617) 466 8339           *
              *                                     *
              *           rolandi@hri.com           *
              ***************************************