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Article 1716 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: peterka@maestro.htsa.aha.nl (Peter Kaptein)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: AI as the Next Stage in Evolution
Message-ID: <426@htsa.htsa.aha.nl>
Date: 28 Nov 91 09:00:20 GMT
References: <YAMAUCHI.91Nov27024148@indigo.cs.rochester.edu>
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Organization: AHA-TMF, Polytechnical Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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In article <YAMAUCHI.91Nov27024148@indigo.cs.rochester.edu> yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes:

"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."

Next stage in evolution. Hmm. No. In terms of evolution, intelligent 
machines just _popped up_. Every specie on earth is the result of
a long way of changing and altering to survive the world arount them.
                     
"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."

Replacing human species. Why do people always think in terms like:
'This new thing is better then me, therefore it must be dangerous'?
Fear of the future always seems to be linked with AI. I'm getting 
pretty bored by now. People who think this way are of the same kind
that burned witches century's ago.
If AI has more and better features then human species, then USE IT.
Don't sit back, limit your imagination and drop yourselves into
fear. Take part of this new road 'evolution' can go.
  In other words: if IM or AI gets more capabilitys then human mind,
link it in one way or another. Machines are built to be used.

>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?

It's a better approach then the 'evolution'-version.


                 "Hello" he said, and dissapeared.

It's not so hard to be a loony,

 Peter.


