jmh@coyote.datalog.com (John Hughes) (06/03/91)
I recently finished Eric Mueller's book "Daydreaming in Humans and Machines", and I was quite taken aback by the overall coherence of the internal 'daydream' stream-of-thought generated by the program. I was wondering why I haven't seen more about this book. Has anyone read it? If so, what did you think of it? (apologies if I mispelled the author's name) -- | John M. Hughes | "...unfolding in consciousness at the | | datalog.com!moondog!jmh | deliberate speed of pondering." - Daniel Dennet | | jmh%coyote@noao.edu |--------------------------------------------------| | jmh%moondog@datalog.com | P.O.Box 43305, Tucson, AZ 85733 602-624-8008 |
csd10@seq1.keele.ac.uk (Y.O. Busia) (06/04/91)
In article <1991Jun3.075711.11333@coyote.datalog.com>, jmh@coyote.datalog.com (John Hughes) writes: > I recently finished Eric Mueller's book "Daydreaming in Humans and > Machines", and I was quite taken aback by the overall coherence of the > internal 'daydream' stream-of-thought generated by the program. I was > wondering why I haven't seen more about this book. Has anyone read it? > If so, what did you think of it?
nagle@well.sf.ca.us (John Nagle) (06/05/91)
jmh@coyote.datalog.com (John Hughes) writes: >I recently finished Eric Mueller's book "Daydreaming in Humans and >Machines", and I was quite taken aback by the overall coherence of the >internal 'daydream' stream-of-thought generated by the program. I was >wondering why I haven't seen more about this book. Has anyone read it? >If so, what did you think of it? The idea is interesting, but it seems that most of the potential daydreams were essentially built into the program. As Muller puts it, under "Shortcomings of the Program", "DAYDERAMER cannot daydream for a long time and cannot generate many novel sequences". The program has provided to it a number of possible script fragments and some rules for assembling them, and the number of possible scripts resulting is limited. There was a system in the 1950s (!) which generated scripts for TV Westerns by somewhat similar means. Anyone have the reference? Mr. Mulller seems to have moved from daydream to speculation. The preface ends "Preparation of the revision for publication as a book was made possible by the Analytical Propretary Trading Unit of Morgan Staley and Company in New York." John Nagle
srt@aero.org (Scott "TCB" Turner) (06/10/91)
John Nagle writes: >The idea is interesting, but it seems that most of the potential >daydreams were essentially built into the program. As Muller [sic] >puts it, under "Shortcomings of the Program", "DAYDREAMER cannot >daydream for a long time and cannot generate many novel sequences". >The program has provided to it a number of possible script fragments >and some rules for assembling them, and the number of possible >scripts resulting is limited. DAYDREAMER is a finite program with no learning capability. Naturally the number and kinds of daydreams it can produce is limited. DAYDREAMER was intended as an exploration into the types of processes involved in daydreaming. The daydreams it produces demonstrate that the processes and knowledge structures Mueller uses can lead to plausible results. DAYDREAMER is not intended as a "performance" model of daydreaming, and it isn't meaningful to criticize it on that basis. I think there are some problems with DAYDREAMER, but the fact that it can't produce an infinite number of daydreams isn't one of them. In AI, creativity is a much younger problem than natural language understanding or planning. (Because, I think, it is a much harder problem.) Criticizing an early creativity program because it can only produce "limited" output is like criticizing SHRDLU because it could only handle the blocks world. It may be that someday we'll have creativity programs that, given a large knowledge base, can invent endlessly and fruitfully. But at this stage of our understanding and research into creativity that isn't to be expected. What you might question is whether DAYDREAMER produces enough different daydreams to support Mueller's model of daydreaming. Although you trivialize DAYDREAMER as a program "with some scripts and rules to combine them" I think that reading Mueller's book will convince most readers that DAYDREAMER does indeed perform well enough to support the plausibility of Mueller's theories. -- Scott Turner