Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!tness7!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: The future of AI
Message-ID: <4347@killer.UUCP>
Date: 4 Jun 88 08:15:13 GMT
References: <48.22A3B84F@isishq.UUCP>
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 127

in article <48.22A3B84F@isishq.UUCP>, doug@isishq.UUCP (Doug Thompson) says:
> I wonder. I actually wonder if the human psyche (the subject of 
> psychology) can actually be dealt with "scientifically" or 
> mathematically at all.
> Humans appear to be unpredictable. 
> Second, think about how you might scientifically or mathematically 
> analyse why John Doe is a republican and Jane Doe is a Democrat. 

Humans APPEAR to be unpredictable. However, psychiatrists today can to large
extent predict how a certain person will react to certain situations, if they
have a large enough base of knowledge about that person. E.G. the "stress
tests" given to certain persons in critical positions to ascertain whether
they will react correctly when an emergency situation arises. 

To generalize, there are a couple of basic assumptions needed to make
AI a science instead of a religion:

1) The human mind consists of mechanism (program) and data (memories),
2) All human action is detirmined by the operation of the mind's mechanisms
   upon the mind's memories,
3) The computer can model the above.

In particular, 
   1) neurologists have identified some of the mechanism by which
the brain controls the body and stores memory (although they have not come
anywhere close to understanding enough to help AI researchers much), and 
   2) Psychologists, via a rough understanding of some of the common basic
mechanisms (e.g.  the "pleasure principle"), and with a few of the patient's
memories to apply those mechanisms to, have been fairly successful in
uncovering some of the mechanism/memory juxtapositions underlying a particular
action by a particular patient.

So I have little doubt that the human mind IS succeptable to scientific
analysis. As to whether it can be modelled (part 3), however, is still in
doubt. For example, if we accept that a Z-80 is about as powerful as a neuron,
it would still take over a million of them to approach the complexity of the
human brain. Clearly, we are still quite a few years away from having the
hardware horsepower necessary.

> this into an AI model, and ask a machine to decide which is "best" or 
> which is "right", the democratic party or the republican party. Try to 
> replicate the human decision-making process at the ballot-box. 

Under the above model, your choice is dictated by your past experiences
(memories) and by various mechanisms operating upon those memories (e.g.
mechanism: pleasure/security. Memories: Political discussions, which policies
were best, who was the better speaker, smarter, etc.).

That is, your choice consists of neurons firing in a particular pattern. And,
if somehow, microseconds before the vote, we had the sum total of your
knowledge and experience available to us, we could predict exactly how you
would vote. You could have voted in no other way besides that dictated to you
by your knowledge and experience and the underlying mechanisms.

> AI wants to build machines that can perform tasks or make decisions as 
> well as humans. I think though, that human reason and decision making is 
> not mechanical, it is a-mathematical, a-scientific and a-rational. It is 
> hinged to something else, human values (variable), passion (wholly 
> subjective), emotions (volatile) and sympathies (unpredictable). 

Science asserts the exact opposite: That everything can be explained, that
everything can be modelled, and that the way to gain knowledge is to seek
these explanations and models.

Religion, on the other hand, is completely the opposite. Religion asserts that
there are things that cannot be explained, that some things are beyond
comprehension, and to seek explanation is to lose the faith.

In other words, your statements imply that you are a member, unwittingly or
no, of a religion whose basic tenate is that there is at least one thing in
the universe (the human mind) which cannot be explained. Just as other
religions have as their basic tenate that the one unexplainable thing is
"God." 

> created and not instrinsically creative. My hunch is that human thought 
> is really dependent on dimensions of the universe which science (as we 
> currently understand it) is not yet capable of fathoming. 

I would be interested in hearing the reasoning behind your "hunch". If you
have any evidence or experience that may be relevant to the AI community,
perhaps we should hear of it?

> How can you apply math or science to such things as Faith, Spiritual 
> sensibility, relgious experience, love or  hatred? 

Oh boy. Want me to give you a long anthropological and/or sociological
treatise upon the relation between faith in shamans, and survival in primitive
societies? Love as an outgrowth of the nurturing instinct which assures
survival of offspring? Hatred as an outgrowth of the warding instinct which
protects the resources of the family group thus aiding survival? 

There has been much scientific research into the areas that you mention. In
many of them, we do have some knowledge of the evolution of various social
more's from ancient times to the present. Almost invariably, the root cause is
some behavior which, at that time, had some positive survival value.

An assertation that such behaviors cannot be scientifically explained is thus
contradicted by the fact that we have sciences called History, Anthropology,
Sociology, and Psychology. 

> Science can do very well with the natural world, but I suspect there is 
> a part of the human being which is strongly connected to a super-natural 
> reality which science has yet to get a grip on. 

Here is where I become certain that you are advocating a certain set of
religious beliefs (commonly called "New Age", I believe). As I said before,
the whole underpinning of science is that the world can be explained. That
approach has yielded every scientific advance in the world today, from the
wheat upon your table (a scientifically-bread hybrid, high yield), to the car
you drive to work. There is no reason to expect that paridigm of reality to
stop yielding results any time soon. On the other hand, the opposite paridigm
(that there are things that cannot be explained, and to search is to lose your
faith), has yielded no results at all besides innumerable books full of moral
advice that everybody seems to ignore.

To say that artificial intelligence cannot be attained because of magical or
mystical properties of the human mind is thus of no relevance to scientists.
Similiar statements have been made about other scientific endeavors, and have
always proven false. The stumbling blocks to AI are much more mundane:  the
large bulk and limited computing power of today's computers, providing enough
input devices to provide a suitable store of memories upon which to operate,
etc. 

--
    Eric Lee Green                     {cuae2,ihnp4}!killer!elg
         Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509              
"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?"