Xref: utzoo sci.lang:1669 comp.ai:1145
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!ames!rutgers!mcnc!ece-csc!ncrcae!gollum!rolandi
From: rolandi@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM (rolandi)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.ai
Subject: the role of biological models in ai
Message-ID: <23@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM>
Date: 10 Dec 87 02:57:50 GMT
References: Marty Brilliant
Reply-To: rolandi@gollum.UUCP ()
Organization: NCR Advanced Systems, Columbia, SC
Lines: 39
Keywords: models, purpose of ai


Marty!

Sorry about our previous misunderstanding.  But regarding your reply ...

> You know perfectly well that, as a technology
> matures, it stops modeling its techniques on "natural processors" and
> develops artificial substitutes that were previously unknown.  You
> don't fly by flapping wings, your car doesn't propel itself with legs,
> and your air conditioner sweats as a result of cooling, not the other
> way around.  We first learn from natural processors, and then we
> progress by inventing artificial processors.

You make a good point here but, in a way, your examples labor against the 
interest of your argument.   According to some AI theorists, (see Schank,
R.C., (1984) The Cognitive Computer. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley)
AI is "an investigation into human understanding through which we learn
...about the complexities of our own intelligence."  Thus, at least for
some AI researchers, the automation of intelligent behavior is secondary
to the expansion and formalization of our self-understanding.  This is 
assumed to be the result of creating computational "accounts" of (typically 
intellectual) behavior.  Researchers write programs which display the 
performance characteristics of humans within some given domain.  The
efficacy of a program is a function of the similarity of its performance 
to the human performance after which it was modeled.  Thus AI programs are 
(often) created in order to "explain" the processes that they model.

Although one of your examples provides an instance of a machine that employs
principles derived from studying natural flight, (airplanes) I don't
think many people would argue that the airplane was invented in order to
"explain" flight.  Of your other examples, I do not think that the workings 
of an automobile have ever been thought to provide insights into the nature
of human locomotion.  Nor do I believe that the "sweat" of an air conditioner
is in any meaningful way related to perspiration in humans.


-w.rolandi
ncrcae!gollum!rolandi
Look Boss, DisClaim! DisClaim!