Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!klaatu.rutgers.edu!josh
From: josh@klaatu.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: <7749@klaatu.rutgers.edu>
Message-ID: 
Date: 1 Dec 88 02:04:16 GMT
References: <7749@klaatu.rutgers.edu> <193600002@trsvax>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 40


    >  Intelligence is the capacity to do actions, make statements,
    >  exercise judgement, believe knowledge, and pay attention.
    >--JoSH

    Let's see now, my computer can do actions (such as print a file), 
    make statements (it tells me when some command is illegal), exercise
    judgment (isn't that what a conditional jump means?), believe knowledge
    (I've got several files of "knowledge" on my hard disk), and pay
    attention (it waits at the command line for an infinite amount of time
    until I'm ready to tell it something).  I've never thought of my
    MS-DOS machine as intelligent until now :-)

    I think your definition is not a good working definition for 
    intelligence, at least not in the AI domain.

    Don Subt			

I claim that when you say your pc is making statements or 
believing knowledge you are using metaphor rather than actually
using the words in the basic senses I (and Webster) meant them.
I had a reason to say "make statements" rather than "display character
strings" and "believe knowledge" rather than "store information".

If you hear that a person paid attention to X, and, believing Y,
exercised his judgement and stated Z, you understand a considerably
more complex relationship between those activities than happens
in MS-DOS (or even in unix :^).  

However, it is interesting to reflect on the readiness with which
you (in common with most people) anthropomorphize the simple actions
which your pc does perform.  This leads me to believe that when 
computers/programs are capable of such activities even in very
rudimentary form, people will be quite willing to call them 
intelligent.

In fact, I'd be more than ready to call my computer intelligent 
if it understood the single word "No!"

--JoSH