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Article 6180 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Transducers
Message-ID: <BILL.92Jun9131210@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu>
Date: 9 Jun 92 20:12:10 GMT
References: <1992Jun9.051649.9894@cs.ucf.edu> <BILL.92Jun8213911@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu>
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	<BILL.92Jun8150837@cortex.nsma.arizona.edu> <60795@aurs01.UUCP>
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In-Reply-To: throop@aurs01.UUCP's message of 9 Jun 92 16: 13:34 GMT

In article <60795@aurs01.UUCP> throop@aurs01.UUCP (Wayne Throop) writes:

   > bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs):
   > A question such as, "Scrunch up the palm of your
   > hand, and describe the folds that you see," would cause it great
   > difficulty, unless it were connected to an impossibly detailed
   > simulation of the real world.

   How do you get to that conclusion?  If I were a control in
   a TT test, and received that question, I'd probably answer something
   like "I regard that question as cheating.  The whole idea of your
   being unable to see me is so you can't tell if I have hands or
   an RS232 port.  So I think I'll respectfully decline to look
   at my hands and answer this question.".   Or something like that.

   I think that answer is a reasonable one, and it is certainly
   available to a computer without an "impossibly detailed simulation".

   Even a human "control" testee might have to say "I'm sorry,
   I can't answer that, my arms were blown off in a mining accident,
   I'm typing by hunt-and-peck with a prosthetic mouthpiece.".

This objection is very powerful but futile, because *in fact* there is
nothing to prevent the judge from making a decision on the basis of
such questions.  (Remember that the aim of the human participant is to
win, not to be fair.)  And this is precisely the most serious problem
with the Turing Test.

   Further, if a computer had access to a medical images database,
   it could probably come up with a pretty good description... again,
   without recourse to an "impossibly detailed simulation".

You may be right, but my intuition (based on a certain amount of
experience) is that simulating reality at this level of detail will
turn out to be much harder than creating artificial intelligence.  I'm
dead certain that it will require vastly more computational crunching
power (e.g. ray-tracing in real time, etc.).

	-- Bill


