From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!emory!ogicse!reed!news Tue Nov 24 10:51:30 EST 1992
Article 7594 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rseymour@reed.edu (Robert Seymour)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: It is AI when...
Message-ID: <1992Nov11.093453.8107@reed.edu>
Date: 11 Nov 92 09:34:53 GMT
Article-I.D.: reed.1992Nov11.093453.8107
References: <Stafford-101192104649@stafford.winona.msus.edu>
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In article <Stafford-101192104649@stafford.winona.msus.edu>  
Stafford@Vax2.Winona.MSUS.EDU (John Stafford) writes:
> Another foolish attempt -
> 
> Complete AI is when a machine produces useful, unsolicited
> solutions to unanticipated problems and we cannot discern 
> it's methods.

	So anything we can understand is necessarily not AI? Also, since  
discern methods is temporally conditional (I can later learn how something  
operates), is AI also subject to the same conditionality? If this is "Complete  
AI", what is "Partial AI"? To whom must the problems be unanticipated? The AI,  
or the "we" in whose subjective judgement the AI is conditional. If we keep an  
subject for AI in a community of small children, who don't anticipate many  
problems, would it be AI?
	Let us say that we place a computer chess game (with appropriate  
interface) in a community of savages. None of the savages either know chess or  
understand computers, so the machine produce unsolicited, and unanticipated  
solutions. Let us also say that the savages learn warfare tactics by watching  
the machine play itself. It is now useful, and the savages can't discern it's  
methods. Thus, its an AI. However, a paleontologist visits the community to  
study behavior of barbaric peoples. He sees the computer chess game and knows  
how it works, so in the instant he cognates the chess computer, it ceases to be  
AI. This doesn't sound good to me. Any thoughts?

--
Robert Seymour				rseymour@reed.edu
Departments of Physics and Philosophy
Artificial Life Project			Reed College
Reed Solar Energy Project (SolTrain)	Portland, OR


