Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!gilbert From: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Free Will & Self Awareness Message-ID: <1300@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Date: 30 May 88 08:42:35 GMT References: <770@onion.cs.reading.ac.uk> <1177@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <10942@sunybcs.UUCP> <31024@linus.UUCP> <1176@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <1187@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1209@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> Reply-To: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) Distribution: comp Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland Lines: 27 In article <1209@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu.UUCP (Gordon E. Banks) writes: >>Are there any serious examples of re-programming systems, i.e. a system >>that redesigns itself in response to punishment. > >Certainly! The back-propagation connectionist systems are "punished" >for giving an incorrect response to their input by having the weight >strengths leading to the wrong answer decreased. I was expecting this one. What a marvellous way with words has mens technica. To restore at least one of the many subtle connotations of the word "punishment", I would ask Are there any serious examples of resistant re-programming systems, i.e. a system that redesigns itself only in response to JUST punishment, but resists torture and other attempts to coerce it into falsehood? I suspect the next AI pastime will be lying to the Connectionist machine (Hey, I've got this one to blow raspberries when it sees the word "Reagan", and that one now adds 2 and 2 to get 5!). Who gets the key to these machines? I'm already having visions of Luddite workers corrupting their connectionist robots :-) Will the first machine simulation be of some fundamentalist religious fanatic? -- Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science, The University, Glasgow gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs!ukc!glasgow!gilbert The proper object of the study of humanity is humans, not machines