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Cyhist Dec 21 1996 D
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Date: Sat, 21 Dec 1996 15:30:05 -0800
Reply-To: les@cs.stanford.edu
Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU>
From: Les Earnest <les@Steam.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: I got a chill
In-Reply-To: John Clark's message of Wed, 18 Dec 1996 17:53:53 -0800
<199612212221.OAA12878@Steam.Stanford.EDU>
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
John Clark writes:
Michael, while it may be romantic to speak so of chess playing algorithms, but i can tell you from personal experience they are *not* intelligent in any way. [. . .]
Padgett Peterson seems to concur:
Chess is a structured game with a finite series of opportunities for every move. Human thought is different, rapidly adapting to different and unpredictable rule changes.
In other words, intelligence is what humans have, whereas machines simply compute. In such a frame of reference one can safely conclude that there will never be such a thing as artificial intelligence.
As for AI, am told that the cows do not really mind...
Neither do some humans -- in fact they pay large sums to get it done.
Regarding the other kind of AI, though current machine intelligence is rather limited in many ways, I believe that it would be foolish to predict that it will not eventually have a major effect on our descendents. However, we are probably a century or two away from that development.
John McCarthy has remarked that achieving true AI will require about 1.8 Einsteins and 1/10 of a Manhatton Project. In other words, what is needed is a lot of fundamental new ideas but not all that much financial support. Unfortunately, Einsteins don't come along very frequently.
Warmly,
Padgett
Unseasonably cool,
-Les Earnest
P.S. Given that the subject of this group is supposed to be history, predicting future history is admittedly off-topic.
______________________________________________________________________
Reply-To: les@cs.stanford.edu
Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU>
From: Les Earnest <les@Steam.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: I got a chill
In-Reply-To: John Clark's message of Wed, 18 Dec 1996 17:53:53 -0800
<199612212221.OAA12878@Steam.Stanford.EDU>
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
John Clark writes:
Michael, while it may be romantic to speak so of chess playing algorithms, but i can tell you from personal experience they are *not* intelligent in any way. [. . .]
Padgett Peterson seems to concur:
Chess is a structured game with a finite series of opportunities for every move. Human thought is different, rapidly adapting to different and unpredictable rule changes.
In other words, intelligence is what humans have, whereas machines simply compute. In such a frame of reference one can safely conclude that there will never be such a thing as artificial intelligence.
As for AI, am told that the cows do not really mind...
Neither do some humans -- in fact they pay large sums to get it done.
Regarding the other kind of AI, though current machine intelligence is rather limited in many ways, I believe that it would be foolish to predict that it will not eventually have a major effect on our descendents. However, we are probably a century or two away from that development.
John McCarthy has remarked that achieving true AI will require about 1.8 Einsteins and 1/10 of a Manhatton Project. In other words, what is needed is a lot of fundamental new ideas but not all that much financial support. Unfortunately, Einsteins don't come along very frequently.
Warmly,
Padgett
Unseasonably cool,
-Les Earnest
P.S. Given that the subject of this group is supposed to be history, predicting future history is admittedly off-topic.
______________________________________________________________________
