Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!esosun!jackson@freyja.css.gov
From: jackson@freyja.css.gov (Jerry Jackson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Message-ID: <281@esosun.UUCP>
Date: 28 Nov 88 21:48:41 GMT
References: <484@soleil.UUCP> <1654@hp-sdd.HP.COM> <1908@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1791@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <1918@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <44150@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Sender: news@esosun.UUCP
Reply-To: jackson@freyja.css.gov (Jerry Jackson)
Organization: SAIC, San Diego
Lines: 27
In-reply-to: engelson@cs.yale.edu (Sean Philip Engelson)

In article <44150@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>, engelson@cs (Sean Philip Engelson) writes:
>
>Of course not.  Intelligent machines won't act much like humans at
>all.  They will have different needs, different feelings, different
>goals, plans, desires for life than we.  But they'll be no less
>intelligent, thinking, feeling beings than we, for it.

I can accept the needs, goals, and plans... but why does everyone
assume that an intelligent machine would be a *feeling* being?  I see
no reason to assume that an IM would be capable of experiencing
anything at all.  This doesn't imply that it wouldn't be intelligent.
For instance: some machines are already capable of distinguishing blue
light from red.  This doesn't mean that they have anything like our
*experience* of blue. (Or pain, or sorrow, or pleasure... etc.)
Personally, I think this is a good thing.  I would rather not have a
machine that I would be afraid to turn off for fear of harming
*someone*.  It does seem that our experience is rooted in some kind of
electro-chemical phenomenon, but I think it is an incredible leap of
faith to assume that logic circuits are all that is required :-).

BTW: It is perfectly consistent to assume that only I experience
anything.  i.e. it seems other people can be explained quite well
without resorting to notions of experience.  I claim that it is very
likely that this position would be accurate in the case of intelligent
machines (at least...  intelligent digital computers ;-)

--Jerry Jackson