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Article 1697 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: AI as the Next Stage in Evolution
Message-ID: <39929@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 27 Nov 91 21:05:49 GMT
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:
>From The Tomorrow Makers by Grant Fjermedal:
>
>"I'm sure the chimpanzees thought people were a bad thing."
>	-- Marvin Minsky
>

Marvin Minsky's understanding of evolution is breathtaking.

>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.

But, perhaps their capacity for self destruction and/or academic
stultification will also exceed our own, thus dooming them to extinction
or worse. 

>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.

Not working hard enough for the DOD, are we? 



