Hi Pat, (01)
I agree completely. (02)
It may even happen sooner than when we get robots with that power.
It is happening now with all sorts of planning tools which
have a human in the loop to approve the actions and/or
the falsification from those planning tools. Thus the
"robot" is the combination of the sensors, network,
planning software, human trainers, and human decision
makers. (03)
Thanks,
Mike (04)
Patrick Cassidy wrote:
>
> Mike --
> As I mentioned, we are dealing with very practical,
> not philosophical issues. There are two kinds of
> things computers can do for us: interpret and act on
> communications, and perform robotic activities.
> In dealing with the interpretation of communications or
> input data that a person created, a stationary computer
> will only need to be able to determine what was in the
> mind of the creator of the document or data in order to
> respond appropriately. That is the issue I discussed in my
> reply. These representations will generally include the context
> and of course they commonly refer to physical situations in the
> world, and will include things that can only be partially defined.
> But the only physical contacts that our desk computers have is
> with the peripherals from which they will get information and
> to which they will transmit information. The conceptual structures
> in the ontology will include information on how interactions
> with those peripherals relate to the conceptual structures
> (e.g., get an invoice, find the amount due, print a check.)
> Other than the peripherals, the computers we are concerned
> with at present do not interact directly with the external
> world, only with representations of the external world
> that people create based on the representations in
> our minds. In this case the "true meaning" is indeed
> what was intended by the person creating the communication.
> Certainly, deciding how best to represent physical entities
> in abstract conceptual structures is a very relevant
> issue, even if if were possible to divorce it from simply
> trying to reproduce the way people have already represented those
> physical things in their minds. But after many years of debate
> it should be quite clear that the only objective way to know what
> manner of encoding is better than another is to see how applications
> using that encoding perform on real tasks. It won't be
> resolved by debating at a workshop. It's been tried.
> Only when we get to robotics or interpretation of
> physical sensor information will it be necessary for the
> computer to form its own model of the external physical
> world, rather than depending on the model encoded in its
> own ontology and in the minds of those agents with which
> it is in communication. Robotic agents with those kinds of
> sensory/motion capabilities will then need some
> ability to form models of the external world based on
> input from its sensors, and it will be in a position to
> experimentally verify or falsify theories and models of
> the external world. Then you get into the question of how
> to determine whether the conceptual structures faithfully represent
> the physical objects and processes. This is an interesting topic,
> but it is not necessary to address those issues when
> dealing with information-processing tasks such as
> the interpretation of communications. There are research
> projects in which the creation and verification of models
> of physical situations are investigated in the context
> of robot action. We aren't dealing with those at present.
> For this group at this point we do not
> anticipate that our computers will contradict us when
> we make assertions about the external world, unless
> there is some logical inconsistency in our assertions.
> The information we give to the computer will be taken
> as fact, and if we specify the context it will be
> recorded as fact in a particular context. The computer
> only needs to be able to determine what conceptual structures
> we had in mind when creating a communication, and
> consult the specifications of its program to determine
> what decisions need to be made based on those conceptual
> structures. So, for this purpose, yes, there are physical
> forms that are referenced by these conceptual structures, but
> the non-robotic computer has no possible way of contradicting
> the models and conceptual structures in the mind of the
> communicators, so the philosophical question of the
> relation of those structures to those physical entities they
> represent does not arise in our communication programs.
> As I mentioned, our goals at this point are very
> practical. But the ability to encode and decode
> conceptual structures in the form of a communication
> will not be in any way contradictory to the goals
> of a robotic/sensor system that may need to create
> and verify internal models of the external world. The
> two can interact when the time to do so is at hand.
> For our present purposes, we trust that the person
> encoding the model of the external world has done a
> competent job, for whatever purposes the encoding
> was done (which purpose will also be part of
> the encoding). Whether the program works as intended
> is the only way I know of to determine if the
> encoding was done properly.
>
> Pat
>
> Mike Brenner wrote:
> > I would like to become familiar with ontology tools
> > capable of expressing more than simple "literal" meaning.
> >
> > I would like a "true meaning", by which I mean
> > a clustering of information showing how the literal meaning
> > maps to the multiple contexts. That mapping
> > includes constraints, dependencies, and effects
> > from partially defined and partially related chains of symbols.
> >
> > Thus, I don't see meaning as related to conceptual forms in
> > the mind of the reader, but rather to physical forms which
> > are the context in which the communication takes place.
> >
> > Mike Brenner
> >
> >
> --
> =============================================
> Patrick Cassidy
>
> MICRA, Inc. || (908) 561-3416
> 735 Belvidere Ave. || (908) 668-5252 (if no answer above)
> Plainfield, NJ 07062-2054
>
> internet: cassidy@xxxxxxxxx
> =============================================
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