Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!klaatu.rutgers.edu!josh
From: josh@klaatu.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Sound and complete definitions of intelligence.
Message-ID: 
Date: 6 Dec 88 20:58:30 GMT
References: <7749@klaatu.rutgers.edu> <193600002@trsvax>  <5590@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>  <5609@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 46


Mark Plutowski writes:
    Back to the subject.  Until these terms are better defined, 
    one can be perfectly justified in claiming that they apply to current 
    computers.  Perhaps this is acceptable; if not, then the definition
    needs revision, since obviously from one perspective the application
    to computers is (although tongue firmly planted in cheek) not so
    far-fetched.  I'm looking forward to any sound and complete defintions
    of:		KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, INTUITION, INDUCTION, 
		    IMAGINATION, INTELLIGENCE.
    believe me.
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Let me take a tangent that may shed some light on the subject:
Is it wrong to call a teddy bear a "bear" or Sherlock Holmes a 
"person"?  A real bear is an altogether more serious and thoroughgoing
thing: its "bearness" is generative, that of the teddy ascribed.
The bearness of a teddy bear is a *metaphorical shadow* of that 
of the real bear.

Now let's look at a pc running ELIZA.  The "statementness" of its
character strings, the "knowledgeness" of its stored keywords, are
metaphorical shadows of the real things.

Now I claim that the relation of the pc to the human mind is 
like that of a kitten to a tiger or a dollhouse to a bungalow.
They are quite similar in many respects, form and function, 
but so drastically different in scale as to be qualitatively
separate things.  All the ancillary details may be the same,
but the defining characteristic is missing:  the kitten is not
deadly, the dollhouse is not shelter, the pc is not intelligent.

Moravec estimates 10 teraops/10 terawords to be human-equivalent
computational power.  I would be quite comfortable with one teraop/
one terabyte:  the scale of a pc to such a machine is fairly precisely
that of a bacterium to a human body.  

I am not even sure we have to talk about the things the pc does
as requiring any amplification but the quantitative:  it it did a
million template matches for every one it does, held a million 
facts for every one it holds, selected its statements from a set 
a million times the size; will this be understanding, knowledge,
judgement?  Maybe so.  But until then, there is a qualitative 
difference hiding in the quantitative one.

--JoSH