UUCJEFF@ECNCDC.BITNET (10/08/87)
I read some of the MIND theories espoused in the Oct 2 list, and am frankly disappointed. All those debates are based on the Science vs Mysticism debates that were going on 10 years ago when I was an undergrad. I have since discarded both arguments into the /dev/null file. Nonetheless I would like to make a few comments. 1) It is wrong to assume emotion is a flaw of the mind, or even bring up Manson and Hitler. I would say absence of emotion is a flaw of the mind. You want to talk about genius where mind and emotion are equal partners, look at Ornette Coleman or John Coltrane. Anyone who downgrades emotion (or i should say "emotional intelligence") is committing suicide. 2) Even if you say a mind is flawed because it can't be "objective", ( I know some cyberneticians who were saying that we soon won't be talking in terms of "objective" vs "subjective". Those words will be obsolete) let me ask a question. Does anyone believe that as two people become more informed about any subject, as their knowledge and information increases that they will become in agreement? I think the answer is no, and not because the mind is flawed. 3) Some of you seem to be making science in general and AI in particular a religion. Especially with pie-in-the-sky projects of making computers AI identical to human intelligence. That strikes me as another immortality project. Let us say for the sake of argument that you could ( sometime in the year 2525). In that case the product will be necessarily flawed since the human mind is flawed by your arguments. So what have your gained. 4) In the area of art, I prefer so-called irrationality and surrealism. it is more interesting. 5) AI should concern itself with solving problems, discovering new ways to solve and conceptialize problems. It is not as glamorous as making artificial souls, but more practical and fruitfull. Jeff "FREE" Beer, PAN recording artist
gilbert@hci.hw.ac.UK.UUCP (10/29/87)
In article <8710120559.AA17517@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> UUCJEFF@ECNCDC.BITNET writes: >I read some of the MIND theories espoused in the Oct 2 list, and am >frankly disappointed. All those debates are based on the Science vs >Mysticism debates that were going on 10 years ago when I was an undergrad. Isn't it a shame that so many people in AI are so ignorant of the substance of these debates? >5) AI should concern itself with solving problems, discovering new ways to >solve and conceptialize problems. It is not as glamorous as making >artificial souls, but more practical and fruitful. Fortunately, this highly sensible view is attracting more support, and, with luck, it should establish itself as the raison d'etre of AI research. A change of name would help (viz demise of cyberbetics), despite the view of many old hands (e.g. Simon), that they wouldn't have chosen the name, but we are stuck with it now. I can't see how any sensible person would want to stick with a term with such distasteful connotations. However, this orientation for post-AI advanced computer applications research needs extension. It is not enough to develop new computerised support for new problem solving techniques. Research is also needed into the comprehensibility, ease of learning and validity of these techniques. Determinants of their acceptability in real organisational settings are also a vital research topic. Is research in medical expert systems, for example, worth public funding when it seems that NO medical expert system is being used in a real clinical setting? What sorts of systems would be acceptable? Similarly, the theorem prover based proof editors under development for software engineering seem to require knowledge and skills which few practising software professionals will have time to develop, so one can't really see proof editors developing into real work tools until a major shift in their underlying models occur. Such a user-oriented change of direction is a major problem for AI researchers, as few of them seem to have any real experience of succesfully implementing a working system and installing it in a real organisational setting, and then maintaining it. DEC's XCON is one of the few examples. How much is PROSPECTOR used these days? -- Gilbert Cockton, Scottish HCI Centre, Ben Line Building, Edinburgh, EH1 1TN JANET: gilbert@uk.ac.hw.hci ARPA: gilbert%hci.hw.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk UUCP: ..{backbone}!mcvax!ukc!hwcs!hci!gilbert