From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Fri Jul 20 2001 - 19:58:10 MDT
From: "Spike Jones" <spike66@attglobal.net>
> MAD will serve us well, until it fails. We might have the UIM by then,
> but we might not.
> What I have not seen is some kind of timeline that shows the intermediate
> steps that need to be accomplished before the UIM is born.
But you've seen the intermediate steps that allow us to jettison MAD?
> Any major
> project has something like this, but Ive not seen one for AI. Does such
> a thing exist? Are there milestones we should be looking for? spike
Maybe this will help, Spike:
Sam N. Lehman Wilzeg, "Frankenstein Unbound: Towards a Legal Definition of
Artifical Intelligence," Futures (December 1981), pp. 442-457
By any definition the present powers of AI machines are both impressive and
worrisome. Cyberneticists have already created or proven that AI constructs
can do the following:
(1) "Imitate the behavior of any other machine."
--J. von Neumann, The Computer and the Brain (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1974)
(2) Exhibit curiosity (ie are always moving to investigate their
environment); display self-recognition (ie react to the sight of themselves);
and manifest mutual recognition of members of their own machine species.
--W.G. Walter, The Living Brain (New York: W.W. Norton and Co, 1953)
(3) Learn from their own mistakes.
--N. Wiener, God and Golem, Inc (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966)
(4) Be as "creative" and "purposive" as are humans, even to the extent of
"looking for purposes which they can fulfill."
--N. Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings (Garden City, NY: Dobleday, 1954)
(5) Reproduce themselves, in five fundamentally different modes, of which
the fifth--the "probabilistic mode of self-reproduction"--closely parallels
biological evolution through mutations (which in the case of [machines] means
random changes of elements), so that "highly efficient, complex, powerful
automata can evolve from inefficient, simple, weak automata."
-- J. von Neumann, Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1966)
(6) "Can have an unbounded life span through self-repairing mechanisms."
--M. Arbib, Brains, Machines and Mathematics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964)
In short, "a generation of robots is rapidly evolving, a breed that can see,
read, talk, learn, and even feel [emotions]."
--D. Rorvik, As Man Becomes Machine (New York: Pocket Books, 1971)
Stay hungry,
--J. R.
Useless hypotheses, etc.:
consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind, free will, qualia,
analog computing, cultural relativism, GAC, CYC, and ELIZA
Everything that can happen has already happened, not just once,
but an infinite number of times, and will continue to do so forever.
(Everything that can happen = more than anyone can imagine.)
We won't move into a better future until we debunk religiosity, the most
regressive force now operating in society.
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