From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!cam Tue Jun  9 10:06:02 EDT 1992
Article 6010 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding: Virtual vs. Real
Message-ID: <22133@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 1 Jun 92 16:14:12 GMT
References: <1992May29.152559.226@mp.cs.niu.edu> <9597@scott.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jun1.014731.28528@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Lines: 27

In article <1992Jun1.014731.28528@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:

> But once the grounding is established
>on one computer robot, you simply do a disk copy to establish it on the
>next.  In other words, the only reason for real-world grounding is that
>manual generation of the data would be too difficult.

Grounding is not just an initial calibration. The world changes,
sensors age, robots get fatter and slower (if you see what I mean :-).
In other words, grounding needs a continuous process of tracking, of
adaptation. If you remove that, and simply depend on an initial
calibration, you have a system which simply happens to be grounded
now, and with luck will still be grounded tomorrow, but is destined to
drift gradually out of registration with the world. An unguided
missile, a ballistic rather than guided trajectory.

>  You should ask Harnad, not me.  Harnad assumed that there was intelligence
>in his TTT.  I am just using that as a basis for further exploration.  All
>I am claiming to show is that the intelligence is not in the transducers,
>so it must be in what is left.

Right. It depends on the kind of connection with the world: history,
purposes, tracking, guiding.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205


