Date: Mon 13 Jun 1988 15:29-EDT From: AIList Moderator Nick Papadakis Reply-To: AIList@AI.AI.MIT.EDU Us-Mail: MIT Mail Stop 38-390, Cambridge MA 02139 Phone: (617) 253-2737 Subject: AIList Digest V7 #29 To: AIList@AI.AI.MIT.EDU Status: RO AIList Digest Tuesday, 14 Jun 1988 Volume 7 : Issue 29 Today's Topics: Philosophy and AI ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 Jun 88 04:05:36 GMT From: trwrb!aero!venera.isi.edu!smoliar@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Subject: Re: Me and Karl Kluge (no flames, no insults, no abuse) I see that Gilbert Cockton is still judging the quality of AI by his statistical survey of bibliographies in AAAI and IJCAI proceedings. In the hope that the rest of us agree to the speciousness of such arguments, I shall try to take a more productive approach. In article <1312@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes: > >The point I have been making repeatedly is that you cannot study human >intelligence without studying humans. John Anderson and his paradigm >partners and Vision apart, there is a lot of AI research which has >never been near a human being. Once again, what the hell can a computer >program tell us about ourselves? Secondly, what can it tell us that we >couldn't find out by studying people instead? Let us consider a specific situation. When we study a subject like physics, there is general agreement that a good textbook must include not only an exposition of fundamental principles but also a few examples of solved problems. Why are these examples of benefit to the student? It would appear that he uses them as some sort of a model (perhaps the basis for analogical reasoning) when he starts doing assigned problems; but how doesd he know when an example is the right one to draw upon? The underlying question is this: HOW DOES KNOWLEDGE OF SUCCESSFULLY SOLVED PROBLEMS ENHANCE OUR ABILITY TO SOLVE NEW PROBLEMS? Now, the question to Mr. Cockton is: What have all those researchers who don't spend so much time with computer programs have to tell us? From what I have been able to discern, the answer is: NOT VERY MUCH. Meanwhile, there are a variety of AI projects which have begun to address the questions concerned with what constitutes experiential memory and how it might be modeled. I am not claiming they have come up with any answers yet, but I see no more reason to rail against their attempts than to attack attempts by those who would not sully their investigative efforts with such ugly artifacts as computer programs. ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jun 88 09:06:42 GMT From: mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!simon@uunet.uu.net (Simon Brooke) Subject: AI seen as an experiment to determine the existence of reality Following the recent debate in this newsgroup about the value of AI, a thought struck me. It's a bit tenuous.... As I understand it, Turing's work shows that the behaviour of any computing device can be reproduced by any other. Modern cosmology holds that: 1] there is a material world. 2] if there is a spiritual world, it's irrelevent, as the spiritual cannot affect the material. 3] the brain is a material object, and is the organ which largely determines the behaviour of human beings. If all this is so, then it is possible to exactly reproduce the workings of a human brain in a machine (I think Turing actually claimed this, but I can't remember where). So AI could be seen as an experiment to determine whether a material world actually exists. While the generation of a completely successful computational model of a human brain would not prove the existence of th material, the continued failure to do so over a long period would surely prove its non-existence... wouldn't it? ** Simon Brooke ********************************************************* * e-mail : simon@uk.ac.lancs.comp * * surface: Dept of Computing, University of Lancaster, LA 1 4 YW, UK. * * * * Neural Nets: "It doesn't matter if you don't know how your program * *************** works, so long as it's parallel" - R. O'Keefe ********** ------------------------------ Date: 10 Jun 88 19:13:26 GMT From: ncar!noao!amethyst!kww@gatech.edu (K Watkins) Subject: Re: Bad AI: A Clarification In article <1336@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Gilbert Cockton writes: > >I do not think there is a field of AI. There is a strange combination >of topic areas covered at IJCAI etc. It's a historical accident, not >an epistemic imperative. > Of what field(s) is such a statement false? An inventive imagination can regroup the topics of study and knowledge in a great many ways. Indeed, it might be very useful to do so more often. (Then again, the cross-tabulating chore of making sure we lost a minimum of understanding in the transition would be enormous.) ------------------------------ Date: 11 Jun 88 01:50:33 GMT From: pasteur!agate!garnet!weemba@ames.arpa (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) Subject: Re: Who else isn't a science? In article <13100@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, bjpt@maui (Benjamin Thompson) writes: >In article <10510@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu writes: >>Gerald Edelman, for example, has compared AI with Aristotelian >>dentistry: lots of theorizing, but no attempt to actually compare >>models with the real world. AI grabs onto the neural net paradigm, >>say, and then never bothers to check if what is done with neural >>nets has anything to do with actual brains. > >This is symptomatic of a common fallacy. No, it is not. You did not catch the point of my posting, embedded in the subject line. > Why should the way our brains >work be the only way "brains" can work? Why shouldn't *A*I workers look >at weird and wonderful models? AI researchers can do whatever they want. But they should stop trying to gain scientific legitimacy from wild unproven conjectures. > We (basically) don't know anything about >how the brain really works anyway, so who can really tell if what they're >doing corresponds to (some part of) the brain? Right. Or if they're all just hacking for the hell of it. But if they are in fact interested in the brain, then they could period- ically check back at what is know about real brains now and then. Since they don't, I think Edelman's "Aristotelian dentistry" criticism is per- fectly valid. In article <3c84f2a9.224b@apollo.uucp>, nelson_p@apollo (Peter Nelson) writes, replying to the same article: > I don't see why everyone gets hung up on mimicking natural > intelligence. The point is to solve real-world problems. This makes for an engineering discipline, not a science. I'm all for AI research in methods of solving difficult ill-defined problems. But calling the resulting behavior "intelligent" is completely unjustified. Indeed, many modern dictionaries now give an extra meaning to the word "intelligent", thanks, partly due to AI's decades of abuse of the term: it means "able to peform some of the functions of a computer". Ain't it wonderful? AI succeeded by changing the meaning of the word. ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 ------------------------------ Date: 11 Jun 88 07:00:13 GMT From: oodis01!uplherc!sp7040!obie!wsccs!dharvey@tis.llnl.gov (David Harvey) Subject: Re: AI and Sociology In article <1301@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>, Gilbert Cockton writes: > It is quite improper to cut out a territory which deliberately ignores > others. In this sense, psychology and sociology are guilty like AI, > but not nearly so much, as they have territories rather than a > territory. Still, the separation of sociology from psychology is > regrettable, but areas like social psychology and cognitive sociology > do bridge the two, as do applied areas such as education and management. > Where are the bridges to "pure" AI? Answer that if you can. > You are correct in asserting that these are the bridges between Psychology and Sociology, but my limited observation of people in both groups is that people in Social Psychology rarely poke their heads into the Sociology department, and people in Cognitive Sociology rarely interact with the people in Cognitive Psychology. The reason I know is that I have observed them first-hand while getting degrees in Math and Psychology. In other words, the bridges are quite superficial, since the interaction between the two groups is minimal. In regards to this situation I am referring to the status quo as it existed at the University of Utah where I got my degrees and at Brigham Young University which I visited fairly often. And in answer to your demands of AI, perhaps you better take a very good look at how well social scientists are at answering questions about thinking. They are making progress, but it is not in the form of a universal theory, ala Freud. In other words, they are snipping away at this little idea and that little paradigm, just like AI researchers are doing. > Again, I challenge AI's rejection of social criticisms of its > paradigm. We become what we are through socialisation, not programming > (although some teaching IS close to programming, especially in > mathematics). Thus a machine can never become what we are, because it > cannot experience socialisation in the same way as a human being. Thus > a machine can never reason like us, as it can never absorb its model of > reality in a proper social context. Again, there are well documented > examples of the effect of social neglect on children. Machines will not > suffer in the same way, as they only benefit from programming, and not > all forms of human company. Anyone who thinks that programming is > social interaction is really missing out on something (probably social > interaction :-)) You obviously have not installed a new operating system on a VAX only to discover that it has serious bugs. Down comes the machine to the >>> prompt and the process of starting the machine up with old OS that worked begins. Since the machine does not have feelings (AHA!) it doesn't care, but it certainly was not beneficial to its performance. Or a student's program with severe bugs that causes core dumps doesn't help either. Then there is the case of our electric news feed being down for several weeks. When it finally resumed operation it completely filled the process table, making it impossible to even sign on as super-user and do an 'ls'! The kind of programming that allowed it to spawn that many child processes is not my idea of something beneficial! In other words, bad programming is to a certain extent an analog to social neglect. Running a machine in bad physical conditions and physically abusing a person are also similar. Yes, you can create enough havoc with Death Valley heat to totally kill a computer! > > RECOMMENDED READING > > Jerome Bruner on MACOS (Man: A Course of Study), for the reasoning > behind interdisciplinary education. > ^^^ No qualms with the ideas presented in this book > > Skinner's "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" and the collected essays in > response to it, for an understanding of where behaviourism takes you > ("pure" AI is neo-behaviourist, it's about little s-r modelling). > ^^^ And I still think his model has lots of holes in it! dharvey @ WSCCS (David A Harvey) ------------------------------ Date: 11 Jun 88 13:49:09 GMT From: trwrb!aero!venera.isi.edu!smoliar@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Subject: Re: Bad AI: A Clarification In article <1336@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes: >But when I read misanthropic views of Humanity in AI, I will reply. Do you mean that all your wholesale railing against AI over the last several weeks (and it HAS been pretty wholesale) is just a response to "misanthropic views of Humanity?" Perhaps we may have finally penetrated to the root of the problem. I wish to go on record as observing that I have yet to read a paper on AI which has passed through peer review which embodies any sense of misanthropy whatsoever, and that includes all those conference proceedings which Mr. Cockton wishes to take as his primary source of knowledge about the field. There is certainly a lot of OBJECTIVITY, but I have never felt that such objectivity could be confused with misanthropy. As I said before, stop biting the fingers long enough to look where they are pointing! ------------------------------ Date: 11 Jun 88 19:15:20 GMT From: well!sierch@lll-lcc.llnl.gov (Michael Sierchio) Subject: Re: Who else isn't a science? I agree, I think anyone should study whatever s/he likes -- after all, what matters but whatever you decide matters. I also agree that, simply because you are interested in something, you shouldn't expect me to regard your study as important or valid. AI suffers from the same syndrome as many academic fields -- dissertations are the little monographs that are part of the ticket to respectability in academe. The big, seminal questions (seedy business, I know) remain unanswered, while the rush to produce results and get grants and make $$ (or pounds, the symbol for which...) is overwhelming. Perhaps we would not be complaining if the study of intelligence and automata, and all the theoretical foundations for AI work received their due. It HAS become an engineering discipline, if not for the nefarious reasons I mentioned, then simply because the gratification that comes from RESULTS is easier to get than answers to the nagging questions about what we are, and what intelligence is, etc. Engineering has its pleasures, and I wouldn't deny them to anyone. But to those who hold fast to the "?" and abjure the "!", I salute you. -- Michael Sierchio @ SMALL SYSTEMS SOLUTIONS 2733 Fulton St / Berkeley / CA / 94705 (415) 845-1755 sierch@well.UUCP {..ucbvax, etc...}!lll-crg!well!sierch ------------------------------ Date: 11 Jun 88 20:20:59 GMT From: agate!garnet!weemba@presto.ig.com (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) Subject: Re: AI seen as an experiment to determine the existence of reality In article <517@dcl-csvax.comp.lancs.ac.uk>, simon@comp (Simon Brooke) writes: >[...] >If all this is so, then it is possible to exactly reproduce the workings >of a human brain in a [Turing machine]. Your argument was pretty slipshod. I for one do not believe the above is even possible in principle. ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 ------------------------------ Date: 13 Jun 88 03:46:25 GMT From: quintus!ok@unix.sri.com (Richard A. O'Keefe) Subject: Re: Constructive Question (Texts and social context) In article <1335@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Gilbert Cockton writes: >IKBS programs are essentially private readings which freeze, despite >the animation of knowledge via their inference mechanisms (just a >fancy index really :-)). They are only sensitive to manual reprogramming, >a controlled intervention. They are unable to reshape their knowledge >to fit the current interaction AS HUMANS DO. They are insensitive, >intolerant, arrogant, overbearing, single-minded and ruthless. Oh, >and they usually don't work either :-) :-) This is rather desperately anthropomorphic. I am surprised to see Gilbert Cockton, of all people, ascribing such human qualities to programs. There is no reason why a program cannot learn from its input; as a trivial example, Rob Milne's parser for PRESS could acquire new words from the person typing to it. What does it mean "to reshape one's knowledge to fit"? Writing programs which adapt to the particular client has been an active research area in AI for several years now. As for insensitivity &c, if we could be given some examples of what kinds of IKBS behaviour Gilbert Cockton interprets as having these qualities, and or otherwise similar behaviours not so interpreted, perhaps we could get some constructive criticism out of this. The fact that "knowledge", once put into an IKBS, is fossilized, bothers me. I am so far in sympathy with Cockton as to think that any particular set of facts & rules is most valuable when it is part of a tradition/ practice/social-context for interpreting, acquiring, and revising such facts & rules, and I am worried that chunks of "knowledge", once handed over to computers, may be effectively lost to human society. But this is no different from the human practice of abdicating responsibility to human experts, who are also insensitive, &c. Expert systems which are designed to explain (in ICAI style) the knowledge in them as well as to deploy it may in fact be a positive social factor. Instead of waffling on in high-level generalisations, how would it be if one particular case were to be examined. I propose that the social effect of Nolo Press's "WillWriter" should be examined (or a similar product). It is worth noting that the ideology of Nolo Press is quite explicitly to empower the masses and reduce the power of lawyers. What _might_ such a program do to society? What _is_ it doing? Do people who use it experience it as more or less intolerant than a lawyer? And so on. This seems like a worthy topic for a Masters in Sociology, whatever attitude you take to AI. (Not that WillWriter is a notable AI program, but it serves the function of an IKBS.) Has a study like this already been done? ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************