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Article 6230 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: throop@aurs01.UUCP (Wayne Throop)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Transducers
Message-ID: <60810@aurs01.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jun 92 15:39:45 GMT
References: <BILL.92Jun10174436@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu> <60806@aurs01.UUCP> <1992Jun11.182144.12157@mp.cs.niu.edu>
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> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
>> throop@aurs01.UUCP (Wayne Throop)>
>> From my own perspective, "AI" is currently able to produce things with
>> "intelligence" somewhere between that of frogs and birds.
> I really disagree with this.
> If we knew how to produce the intelligence of a frog, we would be
> well on the way to understanding how to produce human intelligence.

Well... I'm not sure there's a strong disagreement here.  It keys
on what is meant by "well on the way".  If a journey of a thousand
leagues starts with a single step, I'd guess something upwards of a
hundred leagues have already been paced off.  (Not that I think that
progress of this sort can really be modeled as a linear trip, mind you.)

The other issue is that, presumably, Neil thinks that current machines
aren't up to frog-level of capabilities.  I'd be interested in an
elaboration of this, in particular what do frogs got (in their functional
capabilities) that at least some current computer processes ain't got
(or at least got things very closely akin)?

( I'm presuming for the moment that "wet skin" and "ability to
  respire underwater" and "reproduce using eggs" aren't interesting
  parts of the frog functional capability.  Speed and accuracy of
  motor skills, and certainly miniaturization of implementation
  *might* well be issues... they didn't seem important ones to me. )

Wayne Throop       ...!mcnc!aurgate!throop


