From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!CAD:tektronix!tekmdp!bronze!crimson!tombl Newsgroups: net.ai Title: Re: AI's level of operation Article-I.D.: crimson.1446 Posted: Tue Jan 25 01:33:17 1983 Received: Fri Jan 28 07:31:30 1983 One of the problems which seems central to the issues CB has raised concerns what is knowable. One may say that chemistry is reducible to the laws of physics according to our understanding of the physical world; it is not, however, possible for us to construct or predict the principles of chemistry solely from a knowledge of some set of physical laws. Perhaps "has not" would be better then "is not", but the problem is in what I perceive to be a limitation on human mental abilities. We could just as well ask the question of whether it is possible to know the OS/360 operating system. Most peoples' answers would be no. Steering clear of the existential dilemma, what we find is a body of scientific theory describing the world at a physical level; also a body describing the world at the chemical level. Then there is the theory which attempts to relate the two. We can find the same pattern reflected in diverse habitats: in the structure of institutions, in the algorithms we employ to solve problems, and in the architecture of computing machines. This is not an argument for or against a coherent scientific explanation of the world based upon laws of physics, but a suggestion of what the structure of our understanding of the it is and will be. Given an estimated 10^10 cells in the brain, with an average fanout of say 100 on input and/or output, and several modes of interaction between "wires" and cells, I must say that the prospects of reasoning about all brain function (especially behavior) from our limited knowledge of its substructure, seem to me rather unpromising in my lifetime. Higher levels of organization, and the notion of several such levels, seem plausible. AI research, at best, attempts to define one or more of these levels. Beyond that, I wouldn't make any great claims (there are entirely enough people doing that), but I certainly am not going to trade the opportunity to find out for the grand opiate, the illusion of a secure job, or for the intrinsic pleasure of attending church every Sunday morning. Tom Blenko decvax!teklabs!tekmdp!tombl ucbvax!teklabs!tekmdp!tombl