bwk@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Barry W. Kort) (05/05/88)
In an earlier article, I wrote: >> Suppose I were able to inculcate a Value System into silicon. And in the >> event of a tie among competing choices, I use a random mechanism to force >> a decision. Would the behavior of my system be very much different from a >> sentient being with free will? (--Barry Kort) In article <1069@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) responds: >Oh brave Science! One minute it's Mind on silicon, the next it's a little >randomness to explain the inexplicable. Random what? Which domain? Does it >close? Is it enumerable? Will it type out Shakespeare? More seriously >'forcing decisions' is a feature of Western capitalist society >(a historical point please, not a political one). >There are consensus-based (small) cultures where >decisions are never forced and the 'must do something now' phenomena is >mercifully rare. Your system should prevaricate, stall, duck the >issue, deny there's a problem, pray, write to an agony aunt, ask its >mum, wait a while, get its friends to ring it up and ask it out ... Random selection from a set of equal-value alternatives known to the system. The domain is just the domain of knowledge possessed by the decision maker. The domain is finite, incomplete, possibly inconsistent, and evolving over time. It might type out Shakespeare, especially if 1) it were asked to, 2) it had no other pressing priorities, and 3) it knew some Shakespeare or knew where to find some. One of the alternative decisions that the system could take is to emit the following message: "I am at a dilemma such that I am not aware of a good action to take, other than to emit this message." The above response is not particulary Western. (Well, I suppose it could be translated into Western-style behavior: "[Panic mode]: I don't know what to do!!!") >Before you put your value system on Silicon, put it on paper. That's hard >enough, so why should a dumb bit of constrained plastic and metal promise any >advance over the frail technology of paper? If you can't write it down, you >cannot possibly program it. I actually tried to do this a few years ago. I ended up with a book-length document which very few people were interested in reading. >So come on you AI types, le't see your *DECLARATIVE TESTIMONIALS* on >this news group by the end of the month. Lay out your value systems >in good technical English. If you can't manage it, or even a little of it, >should you really keep believing that it will fit onto silicon? Gee Gilbert, I'm still trying to discover whether a good value system will fit onto protoplasmic neural networks. But seriously, I agree that we haven't a prayer of communicating our value systems to silicon if we can't communicate them to ourselves. --Barry Kort
jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) (05/10/88)
In article <1069@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) says: > If you can't write it down, you cannot possibly program it. Not so. I can write programs that I could not write down on paper because I can use other programs to so some of the work. So I might write programs that are too long, or too complex, to write on paper.
mish@vms.macc.wisc.edu (05/11/88)
In article <414@aiva.ed.ac.uk>, jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes... >In article <1069@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk >(Gilbert Cockton) says: >> If you can't write it down, you cannot possibly program it. > >Not so. I can write programs that I could not write down on paper >because I can use other programs to so some of the work. So I might >write programs that are too long, or too complex, to write on paper. YACC Lives! I've written many a program that included code 'written' by some other program (namely YACC). The point is that the computer allows us to extend what we know. I may not have actually written the code, but I knew how to tell the computer to write the code. In doing so, I created a program that I never (well, almost never) could have written myself even though I knew how _____________________ ____________________________ ___________________ \ / \ / Tom \ / Bit: mish@wiscmacc \ / Univ. Of Wis. Mish X Arpa: mish@vms.macc.wisc.edu X Madison Jr. / \ Phone: (608) 262-8525 / \ MACC _____________________/ \____________________________/ \___________________