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Article 6140 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.92Jun7131519@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu>
Date: 7 Jun 92 20:15:19 GMT
References: <1992Jun6.153132.25456@Princeton.EDU>
	<1992Jun6.163918.24479@news.media.mit.edu>
	<BILL.92Jun6194350@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu>
	<1992Jun7.034525.16059@cs.ucf.edu>
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In-Reply-To: gomez@barros.cs.ucf.edu's message of 7 Jun 92 03: 45:25 GMT

In article <1992Jun7.034525.16059@cs.ucf.edu> 
gomez@barros.cs.ucf.edu (Fernando Gomez) writes:

   Bill Skaggs writes:

   "... If the machine is designed to be a conversation partner, then TT
   capability is sufficient; if it is designed as, say, a gymnastics
   instructor, some degree of TTT capablility is necessary ..." (End of Quote)


   It may not be sufficient. It depends on the subject matter of the
   conversation. Suppose that one builds a robot that eats just like we
   do. Will not be that robot in better position to conduct a conversation
   with us about eating than a program/robot that everything
   it knows about eating is by being told?  [ . . . ]

Well, passing the Turing Test requires conversation indistinguishable
from that of a human, so this is a moot question.  But from a
practical point of view, it may very well be impossible to build a
system that can imitate human language without having humanlike
sensorimotor capabilities.

Rodney Brooks, who builds fantastic insect-like robots at MIT, claims
that one of the greatest hindrances to AI has been the lack of
"embodiment" of the systems that people have built; he argues that
this leads to unrealistic conceptions of the nature of the problems
that need to be solved.  (There is a nice tech report, in PostScript
format, available for anonymous ftp from ftp.ai.mit.edu; the file is
/pub/doc/brooks-ijcai91.ps.Z.) 

	-- Bill


