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Article 1664 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: AI as the Next Stage in Evolution
Message-ID: <YAMAUCHI.91Nov27024148@indigo.cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 27 Nov 91 07:41:48 GMT
Sender: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi)
Organization: University of Rochester
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>From The Tomorrow Makers by Grant Fjermedal:

"I'm sure the chimpanzees thought people were a bad thing."
	-- Marvin Minsky

"There's nothing left after you've destroyed the human species! ...
Genocide of the human species is the murder of God."
	-- Joseph Weizenbaum

"I have no loyalty to DNA."
	-- Hans Moravec

For those who are starting to tire of the "Can machines *really*
think?" thread, here's a new topic:

What do you think of the idea of intelligent machines as the next
stage in evolution?  It seems that if we ever succeed in building
machines with human-level intelligence, it will only be a matter of
time before their capabilities exceed those of humans -- in speed,
accuracy, and memory capacity at least, and possibly in other ways.

Does the idea of replacing the human species make you uncomfortable?
Moravec and Jastrow suggest that this is both inevitable and
desirable, while Weizenbaum reacts to this idea with what might be
considered unmitigated horror.

Moravec expects humans to be obsolete within the next 100 years.
Personally, I think Moravec is a bit overoptimistic (or
overpessimistic, depending on your point of view), but in a couple
centuries, who knows?  This is a question our descendants will have to
deal with eventually.  On the other hand, Moravec argues that we
should consider the intelligent machines to be our descendants as well
-- our _Mind_Children_ (as his book is entitled).  What do you think?

By the way, there is a short summary of a Moravec vs. Weizenbaum
debate in the appendix to Great Mambo Chicken (by an author whose name
I forget).  Does anyone have a transcript of this debate?  Did anyone
witness it first-hand?
--
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Brian Yamauchi				NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory
yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu		Robotic Intelligence Group
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