Newsgroups: comp.ai.alife
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!crash!snodgras
From: snodgras@crash.cts.com (John Snodgrass)
Subject: Re: The Meaning of Life
Organization: CTS Network Services (CTSNET), San Diego, CA
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 1994 19:38:03 GMT
Message-ID: <snodgras.780521883@crash.cts.com>
References: <34qm2c$ei2@scratchy.reed.edu> <SWRA01.94Sep11122615@cs19.cs.aukuni.ac.nz> <1994Sep11.025940.21054@news.media.mit.edu> <snodgras.779997564@crash.cts.com> <35nvmg$9rj@masala.cc.uh.edu>
Sender: news@crash.cts.com (news subsystem)
Nntp-Posting-Host: crash.cts.com
Lines: 34

In <35nvmg$9rj@masala.cc.uh.edu> clifton@rodin.cs.uh.edu ( Clifton B. Davis ) writes:

[del]

>>your instinct to create life to become perverted down the Minski primrose
>>path. It goes nowhere. Take it from someone who's been there (over and
>>over).
>>         

>	You failed, therefor everyone will fail and shouldn't waste
>time trying.  Hmmm.

      Minsky has failed, you have failed, everyone has failed. AI as a whole
is a wash -- because the fundamental idea is wrong. I've tried to clue you
in on where this error lies. Let me put it simply: the purpose of computer
science is not to make machines intelligent and powerful, but to augment the 
intelligence and power of human beings using machines. 

      There are two roads in the future of AI: dilution and delusion. In the 
former, you pretend you never intended to create "real" intelligence, or you 
change the definition. For example, expert systems become considered part of
AI, or fuzzy logic or neural nets. But notice that the closer something is
to genuine AI (like neural nets over fuzzy logic) the more useless it is.

      In the delusion road, you get religion and have faith that in 
the future your suffering will be rewarded because you'll all go to AI 
heaven where superbeing machines will give you infinite power (or maybe you 
will even become superbeing machines and be immortal, as some of the 
revered leaders of this movement have suggested).  

      JES
 


