On 17/02/2011 3:55 PM, Patrick
Durusau wrote:
> Leo,
>
> I don't question any of the statements that John
has made.
>
> The problem is equating those achievements, which
are considerable, with
> intelligence.
>
> Despite the achievement with Watson, it could not
cross the street
> unassisted.
We don't let 3 year olds cross a street unassisted.
People with disabilities can't cross a street
unassisted.
> Not very "intelligent" at all.
>
> Why can't we applaud the considerable technical
achievement as a tool?
>
> Like a back-hoe or locomotive? But just a tool,
nothing more.
>
Equating Watson with a locomotive is similar to the
computers in movies
reducing humans to "Carbon-based units".
It may be true at some level but it misses the point.
Watson exhibits a lot of the hallmarks of intelligent.
Does it then
qualify as a human being? No.
Would it do a better job at tasks that we think
require a lot of
intelligence and judgment? I think so.
Will it be a better diagnostician than the best
doctor? Maybe.
Will it make fewer mistakes than the average doctor?
Probably.
What parts of the practice of medicine require
intelligence and
judgment? Diagnosing difficult medical condition would
seem to qualify.
How do you define intelligence?
Are doctors exhibiting intelligence when the
diagnose a patient's
problem and recommend a course of treatment?
If a machine is doing the same thing but better, is it
not evidence of
intelligence.
If you define intelligent as human-style thinking
(which we are still
not sure how that is actually done), you can say
machines will never be
intelligent because they lack biological structures.
I don't think that that has ever been a recognized
test for intelligence
in AI but perhaps for the general public who have not
given it much
thought, the definition might be acceptable and
somehow comforting.
Ron
> Hope you are having a great day!
>
> Patrick
>
> On 2/17/2011 3:16 PM, Obrst, Leo J. wrote:
>> Amen, John! I quite agree with you.
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
>> Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2011 1:37 PM
>> To:
ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] IBM Watson's
Final Jeopardy error "explanation"
>>
>> Peter and Krzysztof,
>>
>> PB
>>> "artificial intelligence" is neither.
>> That's a quibble about a name. Many people,
including me, have stated
>> such quibbles from time to time, but they're
irrelevant. They're as
>> pointless as the behaviorists who objected to
the name 'psychology'
>> because it implies an unobservable psyche.
>>
>> John McCarthy coined the term 'artificial
intelligence'. He also
>> designed LISP, and he was the primary
advocate of logic-based
>> techniques in AI, which spilled over into
every other area of
>> computer science. He also published some
papers about philosophical
>> issues in AI, which stimulated much of the
R& D that led to our
>> current work on formal ontology.
>>
>> PB
>>> I seriously worry that such a failed
dismal experiment of the
>>> last century...
>> The amount of high quality research done
under the name of AI
>> has been enormous, and it has been so
thoroughly integrated into
>> the foundations of computer science that its
AI origins have often
>> been forgotten:
>>
>> 1. Just look at LISP, which contributed
the if-then-else statement,
>> recursion, lambda expressions,
metalanguage, garbage collection,
>> the ability to write an interpreter or
compiler of a language
>> in itself, etc. (McCarthy, by the
way, was also a member of
>> the IFIP committee that designed
Algol, so his influence was
>> very direct.)
>>
>> 2. Java is basically LISP + CLOS (Common
Lisp Object System)
>> written in a syntax based on C. But
the AI community had
>> 30 years of experience in using and
extending that technology.
>> Sun (which designed Java) was founded
by former Stanford
>> students who learned LISP and AI from
McCarthy and others
>> and who built their company by selling
workstations for AI.
>>
>> 3. Most of the technology for logic-based
systems, theorem provers,
>> formal languages, parsers, etc., was
either pioneered in AI
>> or applied and extended in AI
projects.
>>
>> 4. People like Ted Codd, who founded the
relational DB community,
>> were strongly influenced by AI. Codd
wrote his PhD dissertation
>> on cellular automata and participated
in joint projects on AI
>> related issues. Among them was his
RENDEZVOUS system for
>> an English query language for RDBs
(and, by the way, Codd's
>> group used a parser that I wrote for
their front end).
>>
>> PB
>>> [AI] now re-emerges with respectable
"semantic web" clothing.
>> Please note that the Semantic Web is just a
tiny subset of AI
>> technology, and the primary developers came
from the AI community.
>>
>> The person who developed RDF was Ramanathan
Guha, who wrote his
>> PhD dissertation at Stanford with McCarthy as
his supervisor.
>> While he was finishing his PhD, he worked on
Cyc and became
>> the associate director of Cyc. He later went
to Apple, where
>> he developed the Meta Content Framework
(MCF). He then went
>> to Netscape, where he worked with Tim Bray to
rewrite MCF in
>> XML to form RDF.
>>
>> Guha later collaborated with Pat Hayes and
others (also from
>> the AI community) to define the semantic
foundations for RDF
>> and OWL. (Just check Google for "Guha Hayes
RDF" and
>> "Guha Hayes OWL" to find the W3C documents.)
And OWL began
>> as a combination of two AI projects, DAML +
OIL, and was
>> further enhanced by people from the AI
community.
>>
>> KJ
>>> Watson is a question answering machine
and a very good one. Maybe one
>>> day they will deploy it on your mobile
phone with a Internet connection
>>> to the processing and storage unit in the
cloud similar to the Wolfram
>>> Alpha App. Watson is not intelligent in
the sense that it does not
>>> understand the answers or questions but
it turns out that in many cases
>>> this is not necessary. I think that as a
research domain we should be
>>> rather happy that Watson won and
congratulate IBM -- it is a strong
>>> showcase for our work.
>> I strongly agree. The people who worked on
Watson had a strong
>> foundation in both AI and comp. sci. It is a
respectable piece
>> of research.
>>
>> Anybody who doubts these points should do
some remedial studies
>> in the history of AI and computer science.
>>
>> John
>>
>>
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