XPUM04@prime-a.central-services.umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard) (02/12/91)
Referring to this message in Virus-L vol 4 #23:-
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Date: Wed, 06 Feb 91 14:10:57 +0000
From: boone@athena.cs.uga.edu (Roggie Boone)
Subject: Virus questions (PC)
......
2) Are there anti-virus packages (for PC or any computer) that use
artificial intelligence techniques to protect the system, or is such an
effort overkill?
......
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To avoid mistaken ideas wasting much time and email space, I better explain
a few points re AI (= Artificial Intelligence). There are two sorts of AI:-
(1) 'Expert system'. This is merely a very complicated computer program of
the ordinary type with a lot of decision and test instructions, written by
a programmer to try to copy what some particular human expert knows
already. The actual intelligent agent is not the computer or the program
but the programmer. Whether you give the name 'expert system' to any
existing viruses or antivirals is merely a matter of definition.
(2) Genuinely intelligent (sentient) computers and computer programs that
try to copy how the human brain works, capable of abstract thought etc.
These have not been fully developed yet. They need a (real or simulated)
neural net computer. (There are existing now real neural net computers to
do specialized jobs, e.g. I saw a mortgage-risk-assessing neural net
computer said to be as good as a skilled human mortgage assessor.) To run
such a thing via a simulated neural net on an ordinary computer would need
impossibly much store and run time. It is a sufficient feat for AI
experimenters to simulate small bits of intelligent brain on ordinary
computers: e.g. read the new periodical 'Neural Networks'. Highly parallel
computers like the 'Connection Machine' which is like 2**16 micros siamesed
into a 16-dimensional hypercube, may perhaps be more readily programmable
this way. Whether each present or future make of highly parallel computer
and neural net computer will be liable to viruses, (and whether silicon
neural net computers will be liable to (infectious or otherwise)
psychiatric disorders like biological brains are), remains to be seen.
{A.Appleyard} (email: APPLEYARD@UK.AC.UMIST), Tue, 12 Feb 91 09:01:12 GMT