Comments | erron3000: Alan, you'll enjoy this

erron3000

Alan, you'll enjoy this

Jan 22, 2008 17:56

So, I'm writing about a girl named Ada and a robot named Galatea and an ornery old barkeeper named Deuce X. McKenna, and i'm doing research on strong A.I. on Wikipedia to make sure I have my facts at least believable if not right, and I start reading about the Turing test and such, and then I get into the "Chinese Room" thought experiment. John ( Read more... )

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spkr4thedead51 January 23 2008, 01:43:34 UTC

Sorta gets into the Chomskyan idea of universal language. In the philosophy of linguistics, the man is essentially operating under a language in that the chinese characters have an assigned meaning to him, even though it isn't the language that we normally associate with chinese. A computer that interprets the characters and performs actions based on the translations is doing more than the man is. But all it really shows is that a human can perform machine like calculations. Which we knew anyway, ever since a machine was able to perform simple math.

I don't really see that Searle's idea is relevant at all to the idea of AI.

Knowledge & Language vap0rtranz January 23 2008, 05:11:14 UTC

I was going to cite the same, but say that two concepts are conflated here: theories of intelligence (or knowledge) and theories of language. The former is what he's focused on without ever defining what we mean by "intelligent". The later is the core issue because even if something met our definition of intelligence (in a Platonic forms kind of way), it would still need to communicate to us how smart it is. You could muddle the two concepts but it makes the feasibility of A.I. seem too complex to even answer ( ... )

Re: Knowledge & Language spkr4thedead51 January 23 2008, 06:11:11 UTC

It might just be the late hour, but I'm confused as to if you're saying my comment conflates the ideas, or if Searle's idea does. You are probably right either way ( ... )

Re: Knowledge & Language vap0rtranz January 24 2008, 03:10:33 UTC

I'm confused as to if you're saying my comment conflates the ideas

I was actually saying the OP seems to mash all this up in one big heap called "A.I.".

It can't learn and adapt.

I anticipated that someone would bring this up ... but not you. Learning theory opens up that nasty bag of worms called psychology. That's what the article touches on but is too timid to directly engage. Did the man learn to read? This is what you and the OP are talking about. 'How we know' is the most direct inquiry. Is reading essentially behaviorism? Some say learning is mimicking behavior of others. Would a reading comprehension test for A.I. be merely accessing some expected response? This final thought is what the OP jumped to and where I demand that we define intelligence before we go off looking for it (or heaven forbid, go off making it).

This where you stabbed (at my heart!): a true intelligence, and an intelligence that passes the Turing Test can do, is improviseThe implications of this definition for the mentally or physically ( ... )

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