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Article 6231 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Transducers
Message-ID: <1992Jun12.192537.32302@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
References: <60806@aurs01.UUCP> <1992Jun11.182144.12157@mp.cs.niu.edu> <60810@aurs01.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1992 19:25:37 GMT
Lines: 49

In article <60810@aurs01.UUCP> throop@aurs01.UUCP (Wayne Throop) writes:
>
>The other issue is that, presumably, Neil thinks that current machines
>aren't up to frog-level of capabilities.

  Yes.  That was my point.

>                                          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)?

 Here goes.  Please understand that this is a gross oversimplification.

 Let's look at a hierarchy of intelligence.

  0:	A rock.  Not much here.
  1:	A single celled creature (a protozoan for example).  Not bad
	considering that it has only one cell.
  2:	A frog.  A big jump.
  3:	A mouse.  Many capabilities of mammals which are not seen in
	reptiles and amphibians.  Evidence of consciousness is
	rather more persuasive for mammals than for a frog.
  4:	A chimpanzee.  Very intelligent compared with most mammals,
	but lacking language, and presumably well short of human
	intelligence.
  5:	Human intelligence.

 Now here is where my gross over-simplification comes in.  I would
characterize what we can currently achieve with AI as being the
incremental intelligence to get from step 4 to step 5.  Where AI
attempts have not worked well, or have seemed unnatural, it is usually
because they could not fall back on the intelligence available at step 4.

 What we really need, then, is the intelligence of the chimpanzee.  Once
we have that, extending it to human intelligence should not be
overwhelmingly difficult.

 I see in the frog at least the beginnings of what is missing.  Most
importantly, one thing that is needed is rapid pattern recognition.  The
frog may have a relatively limited set of patterns it can recognize.
But it can recognize food, and respond rapidly before the insect flees
the scene.  It almost surely has some ability to learn, since the
requirements of muscular coordination must change dramatically from the
time of metamorphosis from the tadpole until adulthood.

 Once we understand rapid pattern recognition and learning, I think we
will be ready to make dramatic advances.



