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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article
Organization: The Armory
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 1994 13:23:27 GMT
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In article <3bmb16$8t9@mp.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>In <3blk4d$nqo@jetsam.ee.pdx.edu> marcus@ee.pdx.edu (Marcus Daniels) writes:
>
>>Neil: yes or no, can a robot, in principle, perform scientific
>>experiments?  Or is there some mental `cosmology' that the robot inherits
>>but doesn't have implemented.
>
>This obviously depends on the robot and the type of scientific
>experiment.
>
>For the type of robot we have today, we can use that robot in an
>experiment provided we control the experiment.  In order for the
>experiment to be valid we must have proper controls in place to
>ensure that the robot will act with the required degree of
>reliability.  In many cases, this means that there is a human
>involved in remote control of the robot.  But this is really a
>slave-mode robot, acting as a scientific instrument which we
>control.
>
>For a robot of the future, we might have available completely
>autonomous robots which can act without being controlled.  We would
>then be concerned as to whether we could trust the judgement of the
>robot.  My guess is that we would not trust a robot's independent
>scientific judgement unless we had already come to attribute to the
>robot the same type of free will that we attribute to humans.
------------------------------
How about; more accurately: *IF* we DO build a robot that is self-aware,
then it will have the same whatever we attribute to humans and be able to
pursue science as its own scientist, and able to communicate that fact to
us! Some have asked whether it is possible. WE are possible, clearly. To
imagine that we are special beyond natural law is a bit superstitious, and
not well founded by the principles of universality. We are atoms, and we
behave as atoms behave in all other matter. Quantum uncertainty doesn't
make just anything "aware" or give it "free-will". And it doesn't do that
for us either. It's sort of like imagining that you are the only one in the
universe that is really alive and aware, just because you find it
remarkable that you can only sense internally the sense of being you! It is
a tautology, and one that proves precisely nothing, just as being not made
of flesh proves precisely nothing about what robots can be built to do.
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

