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Herman Jurjus · Guest

Dave Seaman wrote:
[quote]Edsger Dijkstra once remarked that the question of whether a computer can
think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can
swim.
[/quote]
Do you happen to have a reference?

--
Cheers,
Herman Jurjus

Paul Hovnanian P.E. · Guest

julio@diegidio.name wrote:
[quote]
On 27 Jul, 04:22, "Paul Hovnanian P.E." <p...@hovnanian.com> wrote:
ju...@diegidio.name wrote:

The above link returns:
"There was an error processing your request. Please try again."

Sorry, I am posting from Google and the above link works for me.

This one I hope is going to do the trick:

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/alt.hypertext/msg/4262de07b4c18254

For the rest: Are you serious about having a discussion on these
matters? I>d be glad, but not just for fun. I>m going to dream very
shortly now, but tomorrow I>ll check this thread and the points you
have raised.
[/quote]
I>ve been out of the AI biz for about a decade now. But when I was in
it, the state of the art was way beyond anything current search engine
technology has today. But the cutting edge stuff is either classified
for intelligence or proprietary for commercial purposes. Thanks to the
long reach of ITAR, most of the good research has gone overseas.

Web search has a different goal than semantic processing. On the web
(thanks, Google), the search engines are motivated to return as much
crap loosely related to the query as possible (more advertising
revenue). The more intelligence a search engine has, the fewer pages it
will return (less revenue).

--
Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
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^[zz ^[ZZZZZZ ^H man vi ^@ ^L ^[c ^# ^E ^X ^I ^T ? help helpquit ^D
man quit ^C ^c ?Quit ?q CtrlShftDel "Hey, what does this button d..."

Kyle T. Jones · Guest

Occidental wrote:
[quote]On Jul 28, 10:11 am, "Robert J. Kolker" <bobkol...@comcast.net> wrote:
|-|erc wrote:
"Nam Nguyen" <namducngu...@shaw.ca> wrote
|-|erc wrote:
By 2040 smart computers will develop a cure for cancer and
a virus that will halt the aging process, immortality for those
who can afford it.
A wishful thinking! How could we trust "smart" computers would
really care - and not plan to destroy - a species they>re not of?
The takeover would be more subtle I think, nearly every desk job
could be done by computer. Unless you>re doing something physical
in your job an AI can do it. There would be entire cities of retrenched
people, just networks talking to each other in paperless humanless offices.
Herc
A machine cannot do wine tasting.

It may eventually become possible to duplicate the performance of an
expert wine taster by analyzing the constituents of wine and
correlating with wine expert evaluations. The system thus created
would not, of course, duplicate the underlying human ability to
distinguish esthetically by taste; it would be entirely mindless and
parasitic (likewise, most of what are referred to these days as
"robots" are not robots at all but remote-controlled machines entirely
dependent on human abilities).

The great AI accomplishment would be creating a machine that actually
had esthetic judgment. No one has the remotest clue how such a system
could be built, even in principle. The assumption among AI romantics
is that once we have enough computational power all these annoying
conceptual problems will go away, as though the hardware alone is what
matters, and the software will write itself, or the artificial neurons
will obligingly rearrange themselves into a configuration possessing
sentience.

Bob Kolker

[/quote]
But that>s actually much more likely than the classical "top-down"
approach where every possible situation is pre-supposed, and the
reaction to that situation programmed directly (by hand).

Take a look at what>s going on at MIT. It>s been clear for a while that
the bottom-up folks have been on the rise, the top-down folks, waning.

Cheers.

Kyle T. Jones · Guest

Occidental wrote:
[quote]On Jul 28, 10:11 am, "Robert J. Kolker" <bobkol...@comcast.net> wrote:
|-|erc wrote:
"Nam Nguyen" <namducngu...@shaw.ca> wrote
|-|erc wrote:
By 2040 smart computers will develop a cure for cancer and
a virus that will halt the aging process, immortality for those
who can afford it.
A wishful thinking! How could we trust "smart" computers would
really care - and not plan to destroy - a species they>re not of?
The takeover would be more subtle I think, nearly every desk job
could be done by computer. Unless you>re doing something physical
in your job an AI can do it. There would be entire cities of retrenched
people, just networks talking to each other in paperless humanless offices.
Herc
A machine cannot do wine tasting.

It may eventually become possible to duplicate the performance of an
expert wine taster by analyzing the constituents of wine and
correlating with wine expert evaluations. The system thus created
would not, of course, duplicate the underlying human ability to
distinguish esthetically by taste; it would be entirely mindless and
parasitic (likewise, most of what are referred to these days as
"robots" are not robots at all but remote-controlled machines entirely
dependent on human abilities).

The great AI accomplishment would be creating a machine that actually
had esthetic judgment. No one has the remotest clue how such a system
could be built, even in principle. The assumption among AI romantics
is that once we have enough computational power all these annoying
conceptual problems will go away, as though the hardware alone is what
matters, and the software will write itself, or the artificial neurons
will obligingly rearrange themselves into a configuration possessing
sentience.

Bob Kolker

[/quote]
PS: As just a general rule, their (AI) aesthetics would result exactly
as ours do; accidental associations with natural punishers/reinforcers,
or with stimuli that has come to punish/reinforce through previous
association.

How did you think ours came about? Innate?

Cheers.

Kyle T. Jones · Guest

Occidental wrote:
[quote]On Jul 28, 2:44 pm, Dave Seaman <dsea...@no.such.host> wrote:
Edsger Dijkstra once remarked that the question of
whether a computer can think is no more interesting
than the question of whether a submarine can swim.

hmmmmmm. This POV has been more or less refuted by Searle>s Chinese
Room Thought Experiment, no?

QUOTE, wiki
Chinese room thought experiment

Searle asks his audience to imagine that many years from now, people
have constructed a computer that behaves as if it understands Chinese.
The computer takes Chinese characters as input and, following a
program, produces other Chinese characters, which it presents as
output. Suppose that this computer performs this task so convincingly
that it easily passes the Turing test. In other words, it convinces a
human Chinese speaker that the program is itself a human Chinese
speaker. All the questions the human asks are responded to
appropriately, such that the Chinese speaker is convinced that he or
she is talking to another Chinese-speaking human. The conclusion that
proponents of artificial intelligence would like to draw is that the
computer understands Chinese, just as the person does.

Now, Searle asks the audience to suppose that he is in a room in which
he receives Chinese characters, consults a book containing an English
version of the computer program, and processes the Chinese characters
according to the instructions in the book. Searle notes that he does
not understand a word of Chinese. He simply manipulates what to him
are meaningless squiggles, using the book and whatever other equipment
is provided in the room, such as paper, pencils, erasers, and filing
cabinets. After manipulating the symbols, Searle will produce the
answer in Chinese. Since the computer passed the Turing test, so does
Searle running its program by hand: "Nobody just looking at my answers
can tell that I don>t speak a word of Chinese," Searle writes.[1]

Searle argues that his lack of understanding goes to show that
computers do not understand Chinese either, because they are in the
same situation as he is. They are mindless manipulators of symbols,
just as he is. They don>t understand what they>re "saying", just as he
doesn>t. Since they do not have conscious mental states like
"understanding", they can not properly be said to have minds.
END QUOTE

[/quote]
Sounds like so much BS, to me. The computer is doing essentially the
same thing Searle does anyways (interpretation to and from Chinese is
occurring in either case). Searle may not understand Chinese, but he
understands communication, which is the more important "test" taking place.

He isn>t mindlessly manipulating symbols as he claims, or the Chinese he
returns would be random.

When you visit a foreign country and make use of an a-to-b translation
program/book, do you not "understand what (you>re) 'saying'"? Are you
surprised when you order a steak, that a steak indeed appears?

How strange!

Sounds like Searle was up to a load of rubbish here, to me.

Cheers.

Jesse F. Hughes · Guest

"Kyle T. Jones" <KBfoMe@realdomain.net> writes:

[quote]He isn>t mindlessly manipulating symbols as he claims, or the
Chinese he returns would be random.
[/quote]
I see that you>re trolling much like your dear pal, John Jones.

Searle, after all, never claims to be *mindlessly* manipulating
symbols. He merely claims to be following instructions which happen
to (per hypothesis) produce coherent Chinese responses, while he does
not personally understand Chinese.

--
Jesse F. Hughes
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we."-- George W. Bush

|-|erc · Guest

"Lars Kecke" <larskecke@gmail.com> wrote ...
[quote]|-|erc schrieb:
In 5 to 20 years search engines will have a new feature,
contextual search.

you mean, like the Science Citation Index? Has been around since the
invention of <meta> tags.
[/quote]
I once found a book that contained how to write a web browser in visual basic.
Try searching for it, "web", "browser", and "visual basic" all produce a tonne
of fluff, its impossible to search for what you actually want.

[quote]
This will make them quite smart, for
instance if you wanted to search for "a man with a square
jaw and a scar under his eye", the engine will find all
pictures that fit.

only if properly indexed. And this indexing still needs a human (just
look at the state of the art in face recognition. Where are they now? at
90%?)
[/quote]
either preprocessing or real time, the AI should handle both although
processing power would be an issue for real time recognition.

[quote]
Or if you are searching for "Godel>s
Proof" it will find all sites that contain Godel>s proof,
not the myriad of sites that just mention the terms,

So you really believe those search engines will have a "do as I want,
don>t do as I say" feature? Btw, even with today>s ranking techniques,
the original proof shows up in the top 10, simply because it has more
links to it than the pages that just mention it.

or
if you are looking for an actual "art shop", the search
engine will find all the art shops for you, it may ask
if you want to include Amazon resellers.

1 year after contextual search is available, we will crack
artificial intelligence.

no way. Since we still don>t know what this "intelligence" thing is, we
won>t recognize AI until it kicks us.
[/quote]
if it understands sentences and makes up answers, its doing what
the language part of our brain is doing, that>s a big chunk of brain!
spatial and temporal reasoning should be easy once the computers
can talk.

[quote]
Computers will talk and figure things out.

you mean, like Eliza or expert systems that were en vouge in the 80s and
still see some limited applications?

Within 5 years of that we will have driverless cars,

already do. They just have problems with dumb roads.

androids and intelligent talking house robots.

usually I don>t want my appliances to talk to me as long as they do
their jobs.

By 2040 smart computers will develop a cure for cancer and
a virus that will halt the aging process, immortality for those
who can afford it.

ironically, mortality is nature>s defence against cancer. Resetting your
clock will leave you in constant need for maintenance. Oh, and don>t put
too much money in "smart" computers, they don>t even prove math
therorems yet, and that is a really limited and logical part of our
world. Computers are great at handling large amounts of data but they
relly suck at pattern recognition, the stuff us humans do sub-conciously.

By 2060 there will be natural feeling
bionic limbs, and bionic eyes for the blind.

Probably no need for it. Just use headless clones as organ donors.
[/quote]
how does a headless clone secrete the right hormones to grow properly?
how do you stop your brain from aging? you>d be in a fit body but you>d
be senile.

[quote]
Lars
[/quote]
Herc

|-|erc · Guest

"Lars Kecke" <larskecke@gmail.com> wrote ...
[quote]Nam Nguyen schrieb:
|-|erc wrote:

By 2040 smart computers will develop a cure for cancer and
a virus that will halt the aging process, immortality for those
who can afford it.

A wishful thinking! How could we trust "smart" computers would
really care - and not plan to destroy - a species they>re not of?

To borrow Ian M. Banks>s argument, because humans are cute. They share a
common heritage with Minds and are so vastly inferior that they don>t
pose a threat. Besides, using them to re-create famous historical
battles is so much fun.

Lars
[/quote]
We could always impose 3 laws of robotics.

1 Do what Herc says
2 Do what Herc thinks
3 Do what Herc wants

Herc

Sanforized · Guest

|-|erc wrote:

[quote]I once found a book that contained how to write a web browser in visual basic.
Try searching for it, "web", "browser", and "visual basic" all produce a tonne
of fluff, its impossible to search for what you actually want.
[/quote]
It might be helpful if you had a better idea *how* to search.

Try "web browser" "visual basic" to improve the output.

Herman Jurjus · Guest

Dave Seaman wrote:
[quote]On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:50:27 -0700 (PDT), Occidental wrote:
On Jul 28, 4:39 pm, Dave Seaman <dsea...@no.such.host> wrote:
[/quote]
(Bob Kolker earlier wrote:
[quote]Machines can>t do wine tasting.

My argument is that a machine can perform a chemical analysis of wine.
It>s basically an exercise in artificial intelligence.

You didn>t say that, did you?

I thought it was implicit. My point was, there is no use getting bogged
down in arguments over whether performing a chemical analysis can be
compared with what a human does in tasting wine. If a machine can pass a
modified Turing test in which the subjects are asked to evaluate samples
of wine, then for all practical purposes, the machine is a capable
wine-taster.
[/quote]
But /why/ on earth would a machine do wine-tasting?
Or better: what sense would there be in letting machines do (all) wine
tasting?

--
Cheers,
Herman Jurjus

Herman Jurjus · Guest

Dave Seaman wrote:
[quote]On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:58:37 +0200, Herman Jurjus wrote:
Dave Seaman wrote:
Edsger Dijkstra once remarked that the question of whether a computer can
think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can
swim.

Do you happen to have a reference?

Google. I found it without knowing the author. You have an extra
advantage.
[/quote]
Thanks!
For lazy people:

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD854.html
or
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd08xx/EWD854.PDF

--
Cheers,
Herman Jurjus

Dave Seaman · Guest

On Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:27:37 +0200, Herman Jurjus wrote:
[quote]Dave Seaman wrote:
On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:50:27 -0700 (PDT), Occidental wrote:
On Jul 28, 4:39 pm, Dave Seaman <dsea...@no.such.host> wrote:

(Bob Kolker earlier wrote:
Machines can>t do wine tasting.

My argument is that a machine can perform a chemical analysis of wine.
It>s basically an exercise in artificial intelligence.

You didn>t say that, did you?

I thought it was implicit. My point was, there is no use getting bogged
down in arguments over whether performing a chemical analysis can be
compared with what a human does in tasting wine. If a machine can pass a
modified Turing test in which the subjects are asked to evaluate samples
of wine, then for all practical purposes, the machine is a capable
wine-taster.

But /why/ on earth would a machine do wine-tasting?
[/quote]
Because a human programmed it to?

[quote]Or better: what sense would there be in letting machines do (all) wine
tasting?
[/quote]
That is your suggestion, not the OP>s.

--
Dave Seaman
Third Circuit ignores precedent in Mumia Abu-Jamal ruling.
<http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/03/29/18489281.php>

Lars Kecke · Guest

|-|erc schrieb:

[quote]We could always impose 3 laws of robotics.
[/quote]
which are trivial to circumvent

[quote]1 Do what Herc says
2 Do what Herc thinks
3 Do what Herc wants
[/quote]
by enslaving Herc.

Lars

Occidental · Guest

On Jul 28, 6:43 pm, Dave Seaman <dsea...@no.such.host> wrote:
[quote]On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:59:10 -0700 (PDT), Occidental wrote:
On Jul 28, 5:51 pm, Dave Seaman <dsea...@no.such.host> wrote:
On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:05:17 -0700 (PDT), Occidental wrote:
On Jul 28, 2:44 pm, Dave Seaman <dsea...@no.such.host> wrote:
Edsger Dijkstra once remarked that the question of
whether a computer can think is no more interesting
than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
hmmmmmm. This POV has been more or less refuted by Searle>s Chinese
Room Thought Experiment, no?

Not at all. I am not about to launch into a discussion of Searle. Let>s
just say I don>t accept his conclusions, and my reasons have been stated
by others.
Who?

I told you, I am not going to discuss Searle. I don>t consider it a
useful discussion. If you read what I said elsethread, it is useless to
argue over whether performing a chemical analysis is comparable to what a
human does in tasting wine. By the same token,
[/quote]
errr...you are discussing it. Sorry to have to point that out.

[quote]it is useless to argue
over whether what a man/machine combination does in reading and answering
questions in Chinese is comparable to what a native speaker of Chinese
does.
[/quote]
But why is it useless? (Feel free to explain why in the context of a
response in which you maintain that you are *not* going to explain
why).

[quote]
--
Dave Seaman
Third Circuit ignores precedent in Mumia Abu-Jamal ruling.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/03/29/18489281.php[/quote]

mike3 · Guest

On Jul 26, 7:52 am, ju...@diegidio.name wrote:
[quote]On 26 Jul, 14:28, "zzbun...@netscape.net" <zzbun...@netscape.net
wrote:

Computers will talk and figure

Not before humans learn to do so.

[/quote]
Wow, so you can>t talk? Or are you not human?


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