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Article 1674 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: tesar@tigger.Colorado.EDU (Bruce Tesar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: AI as the Next Stage in Evolution
Summary: Obsolete?
Message-ID: <1991Nov27.163210.6186@colorado.edu>
Date: 27 Nov 91 16:32:10 GMT
Article-I.D.: colorado.1991Nov27.163210.6186
References: <YAMAUCHI.91Nov27024148@indigo.cs.rochester.edu>
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In article <YAMAUCHI.91Nov27024148@indigo.cs.rochester.edu> yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>
...
>
>Moravec expects humans to be obsolete within the next 100 years.
>

    This statement to me implies that in some way humans aren't
"obsolete" now. But what purpose do human beings serve, then?
So far as I can tell, humans serve self-defined purposes (since
we are the ones going around ascribing purposes to things).
But then, in that sense at least, humans will never be "obsolete",
no matter what wonderful machines come along. It seems a rather
silly thing to worry about.

>
...
>_______________________________________________________________________________
>
>Brian Yamauchi				NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory
>yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu		Robotic Intelligence Group
>_______________________________________________________________________________


-- 
Bruce B. Tesar                    Internet:  tesar@cs.colorado.edu
Computer Science Department
University of Colorado at Boulder 
Boulder, CO  USA  80309-0430


