From: Robert Owen (rowen@technologist.com)
Date: Sat Oct 16 1999 - 16:31:41 MDT
NOTE: What follows is the "Summary" of this cautious estimation.
Links are provided after the text for further investigation. Author
Dr. Humphrys is currently a Lecturer at the School for Computer
Applications, Dublin City University. The paper was published in
"New Scientist" and presented at the Conference "Computing and
IT"; Chairperson: Dr John Naughton, Wolfson College . [RMO]
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
~THE FUTURE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ~
Dr. Mark Humphrys
University of Edinburgh
I've been trying to give an idea of how artificial animals could be
useful, but the reason that I'm interested in them is the hope that
artificial animals will provide the route to artificial humans. But the
latter is not going to happen in our lifetimes (and indeed may never
happen, at least not in any straightforward way).
In the coming decades, we shouldn't expect that the human race
will become extinct and be replaced by robots. We can expect that
classical AI will go on producing more and more sophisticated
applications in restricted domains - expert systems, chess
programs, Internet agents - but any time we expect common sense
we will continue to be disappointed as we have been in the past. At
vulnerable points these will continue to be exposed as `blind
automata'. Whereas animal-based AI or AL will go on producing
stranger and stranger machines, less rationally intelligent but more
rounded and whole, in which we will start to feel that there is
somebody at home, in a strange animal kind of way. In conclusion,
we won't see full AI in our lives, but we should live to get a good feel
for whether or not it is possible, and how it could be achieved by
our descendants.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
Full Text: http://www.compapp.dcu.ie/~humphrys/newsci.html
Website: http://www.compapp.dcu.ie/~humphrys/
=======================
Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA
=======================
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