Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!bronze!chalmers
From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Turing Test: opinions on an idea
Message-ID: <1991May21.031829.13020@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
References: <YcC8CRG00WBM83X4Fq@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Tue, 21 May 91 03:18:29 GMT
Lines: 26

In article <YcC8CRG00WBM83X4Fq@andrew.cmu.edu> hm02+@andrew.cmu.edu (Hans P. Moravec) writes:

>   Memory of the conversation that has gone before (context) is, of
>course, encoded as the identity of the node reached so far in the tree
>of possible conversational moves and responses (like a finite state
>machine). Since
>the tree is so large, this node address will be a pretty huge number--if
>a typical question contains 1000 bits of essential information, and a
>conversation is 1000 questions long, there will be (2^1000)^1000 nodes
>in the conversation tree, so encoding the node identity will take one
>million bits--not an unreasonable memory to capture this tiny fragment
>of intelligence.

OK, one million bits to encode node address.  Assumming 1000 bits per
answer, that means around 2^1000010 bits of storage will be needed to encode 
the tree itself.  Not unreasonable?

Maybe the best idea would be for it to simulate one of Oliver Sacks'
amnesiacs who forget everything that happened more than 5 minutes ago.
This would save a lot of storage space, and hey, those amnesiacs are
still pretty intelligent.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."
