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From: briand@cv.hp.com (Brian Dixon)
Subject: Re: Neural nets: the argument from evolution
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Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 14:57:12 GMT
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STel 00001 (stel00001@aol.com) wrote:
: After having just read through 12 other messages, I may have missed the
: original argument.  But I did see some things worth commenting on:

: 1) Don't confuse AI with NN.  AI is when you write a very sophisticated
: program that makes a conventional computer "appear" to have intelligence. 
: A true NN is hardware that is designed along the lines of the human brain
: and any intelligent behaviour is true "intelligence", but we use the term
: "machine intelligence" to differentiate that kind intelligence from our
: own; thus the design of the brain as a computing machine is important to
: the kind of computing to be done.

Hear, hear!  AI implies inference and learning in a way that emulates
something that is 'real'.  Expert systems (KBS's) that can deduce new rules,
NNs that can be shown to be able to *generalize*, etc. are examples.  But
systems that only apply a collection of expert information or are only
able to map various functions without being able to generalize are better
left in the category of "machine intelligence", which is where fuzzy logic
belongs too unless you're talking about a fuzzy-neural hybrid system.

: 2) Human intelligence existed long before it could be demonstrated.  After
: all, it took a few years for the development of language, so that humans
: could pass around and pass on their knowledge, without each human having
: to start from scratch with everything.  Note that knowledge gets quickly
: integrated with intelligence.

Referring to your last statement, the difference between 'knowledge' and
'intelligence' is the same as the difference between 2 people where one
learns by rote and memorization (we've all seen a few 4.0 gpa people who
think they're smart but are actually in this category), and the other
memorizes very little but can infer a lot (understanding and logic being
the modus operandi), which I hope is my modus vivendi (yuk yuk!).

--
Brian Dixon, Machine Vision Engineer, Hewlett Packard (Corvallis, Oregon)
503-715-3143 (wk), briand@cv.hp.com (email). "Opinions & attitudes are mine!"
