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Article 1820 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: scot@catzen.GUN.de (Scot W. Stevenson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: AI, Evolution and Moravec
Message-ID: <V1gDK1wzE0U@catzen.GUN.de>
Date: 3 Dec 91 05:48:49 GMT
References: <YAMAUCHI.91Nov27024148@indigo.cs.rochester.edu>
Reply-To: scot@catzen.GUN.de
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Hello Brian,

>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.

I would agree with you in that it is more-or-less obvious that if the
rate of progress in the fields of computing 
continues at this speed, machines will surpass humans in a variety of 
fields. However, I am very critical of all ideas of machines 'taking
over' or 'replacing' humans, since I feel they overlook one factor 
distinctly lacking in machines: the motivation.

Machines do not have the drive of self-preservation present in every single
product of biological evolution. Humans have a tendency to want to live,
perserve their bloodline/species/whatever; machines couldn't care less. 
Just making a machine intelligent does not change its motivational 
structure. Why should a computer want to take over? 90% of sci-fi 
senarios fail to answer this question.

>Does the idea of replacing the human species make you uncomfortable?

Yes. Very much so. However, there is this question about what exactly the
human species will look like when machines are so far advanced. Moravec and
others seem to see a switch from biology to machinery as the most obvious
next stage in evolution and as a way to increase human capacities
that are now not evolving anymore. I think a far more obvious and probable
way is that humans sooner or later will start changing their normal,
muscle-and-bone bodies via genetic engineering. I think that society
will find this much easier to accept than being repaced by steel and
silicon - medical use of genetic products and procedures should be 
common place by then.

>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?

I has the chance to listen to Moravec over here in Germany during a local
symposium called CULTEC. Moravec was the only origional thinker there,
and the rest of the speakers (almost all locals) did little more than
prove the fact that Germany's rampant technophobia is a growing force not
only restricted to the Greens anymore. I'm glad he came.

Tho I have severe doubts that Moravec's vision would work (he passed over 
the part about replacing the brain by machines awfully quickly), the part
about accepting intelligent machines I think is the most likely senario.
Compare other technological breakthrus - all faced violent 
opposition at the beginning. Nobody feels less human today because a
machine can did a hole faster than he/she can. I do not feel depressed 
because a chess computer plays better chess than I do (tho I am told that
the first human losers reacted that way), or because my hard disk can
recite Lewis Carroll better than I can, or my math program is better at
solving certain problems. The generation that experiences these breakthrus 
is shocked, bewildered, and usually has trouble with their self-image as
humans - for the next generation, the machine is just another tool, and
you could almost define a tool as something that does the job of a human
better that a human at a human's bidding. You can split wood with your
hands, but an axe makes it a lot easier =8).

I would think that machine-human interaction will turn out to be not 
any sort of survival of the fittest but coevolution. After all, having a 
machine body might be nice, but carbon has its advantages, too.

							Y, Scot

-- 
          Scot W. Stevenson at scot@catzen.GUN.de in Essen, Germany 
		Thank you for telling me what a Nostromo is!


