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Article 6825 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: choy@skorpio.usask.ca (I am a terminator.)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.robotics,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Turing Indistinguishability is a Scientific Criterion
Message-ID: <1992Sep8.223636.22707@access.usask.ca>
Date: 8 Sep 92 22:36:36 GMT
References: <Bu7rCD.CMG.1@cs.cmu.edu>
Sender: choy@skorpio (I am a terminator.)
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In article <Bu7rCD.CMG.1@cs.cmu.edu>, sef@sef-pmax.slisp.cs.cmu.edu writes:
|> 
|>     From: ward@sun17.vlsi.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Ward)
|>     
|>     If I can push a nail into the wall with my own hands, then why would I build
|>     a hammer?
|>     
|>     If I can pull a plough, then why would I make a tractor?
|>     
|>     To get into the domain of computers; if I can perform 50 Gigaflops then
|>     why would I need a Cray?
|>     
|>     One does not make machines that merely duplicate human function - they must
|>     do it better.
|> 
|> Nonsense!  We make machines all the time that do jobs that a person could
|> do, but doesn't want to.  Consider automatic pilots, automatic door
|> openers, automatic elevators, home dishwashers, or even dial-operated
|> telephone exchanges.  One could argue that a human can do each of these
|> tasks better than the equivalent machine, but the human would get bored,
|> want to be paid a lot, go on strike, etc.  So a machine that does these
|> tasks WELL ENOUGH is valuable, even if it's not nearly as good as a human.
|> Then the humans can spend their time doing things that humans like better
|> (or, in certain economic systems, they can starve).
|> 
|> -- Scott

Au contraire. We are always, well mostly, trying to improve machines that
do not do as well as people. The automatic door opener has to be careful
not to hit someone with the door. It has to be fast. It has to work in
the 40 below without a buffalo coat. The automatic pilot has to be able
to land the plane on short runways or with the afterburners on. Dishwashers
are more efficient with water usage and can take hotter water than hands.
The products we see now are stepping stones towards the future. We don't
always have to do it better than people on the first go. When tractors
first came out, they broke down much faster than any farmer would, even if
he did his gardening without a plow. The first electrical computers
needed paint by the gallon. Present computers need paint by the oil tanker,
but they ARE prettier. Future computers won't need so much cosmetics.
They'll rely on natural beauty.

It seems that in the end we won't starve. We'll have nothing purposeful to
do. And anyone can make a useless machine to be more useless than people.
Do we know something that everyone + machines SHOULD do, something that
could exhaust the resources of the universe?

Henry Choy


