schraudo@beowulf.ucsd.edu (Nici Schraudolph) (10/06/90)
BINDNER@auvm.auvm.edu writes: >A few thoughts on the limits and potentials of AI. >First the limits. I don't think AI will ever be able to really duplicate >human judgement. It may one day be the compliment of man's rational >thought, but it will never duplicate man as it will not evolve the same way. Never say never (especially on Usenet :-). There is no empirical evidence suggesting that "true AI" be impossible - only that it is very hard. The "designed vs. evolved" argument against true AI can easily be refuted: what is to keep up from *evolving* intelligent machines? Granted, they wouldn't evolve in exactly the same way, but their evolution might be set up such as to converge with ours (all we need is some religious fanatics that kill off all androids that betray themselves as non-human :-). >Thus, the thinking machine will never happen and the expert system is limited >to an automated rulebook with data processing functions. Emotion, intuition, >inspiration (gasp, a dualist) and other things which are physical or spiritual >are outside the scope of our abilities (at least I hope they are). Modern philosophers find the dualist position increasingly harder to defend. Claims about the supposed impossibility of one thing or another have fallen by the hundreds through the history of science, and should therefore be viewed with suspicion unless backed up by solid arguments - which have not been forthcoming by the dualists. >this analysis. However, hunches and judgement are beyond the capablities of >automation (at least for the present) as they are non-rational. Non-rational with respect to what theory? Behaviors that seem completely irrational to you (ie. wrt. folk psychology) may be perfectly rational to a psychologist, or maybe to some future psychologist. Non-rational be- haviors are defined by exclusion; the current definition is "not explicable by scientific psychology as of 1990". You cannot a priori rule out the possibility of a future Predictive Psychology of Hunches and Judgement. I am not expecting to see true AI in my lifetime. However, from this I do not jump to the foregone conclusion that it will never happen: the jury is still out on arguments against the reduction of psychology to biology. An excellent argument *for* the possibility of such a reduction can be found in "Neurophilosophy" by Patricia S. Churchland (MIT Press 1986). Please note that I am directing followups to comp.ai.philosophy. -- Nicol N. Schraudolph, C-014 "Big Science, hallelujah. University of California, San Diego Big Science, yodellayheehoo." La Jolla, CA 92093-0114 - Laurie Anderson. nici%cs@ucsd.{edu,bitnet,uucp}