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From: kjfair@midway.uchicago.edu (Kenneth Jason Fair)
Subject: Re: AI and NPCs
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Date: Sat, 13 Jan 1996 07:23:39 GMT
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In article <4d68ei$d7u@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu>, bjpst6+@pitt.edu (Brian J
Parker) wrote:

>Turing's suggested definition of AI was an old one, and more of a 
>philosophical statement than a practical one.  He was advocating "black 
>box" psychology; the idea that it doesn't matter what goes on INSIDE the 
>mind, all that was worth studying was the input and output.  Therefore, 
>looking at intelligence in that light, he was (IMHO) suggesting that what 
>happened INSIDE the computer didn't matter... only that it functioned 
>similar to the real "black box" of the human mind.

Precisely.  Turing never meant his comments to be taken as an actual test
for intelligence.  What he was trying to point out was that there is no
magic involved in determining what "intelligence" is all about.  He was
trying to say that only the empirical results were what mattered.

In fact, if you think about it a bit, you begin to realize that the
Turing Test as it is often cited would leave out things that we might
consider intelligence.  As a hypothetical, suppose an alien visitor
comes down to Earth and we figure out a way to talk to it.  If we were
to put the alien in one box and a human in another, it would not be hard
for the questioner to determine which was the human, since there would
be knowledge common to humans (like facial expressions) that the alien
would not know.  That lack of acommon knowledge base would trip up our 
alien (or our computer).  And yet this alien race was scientifically
advanced enough to communicate, to travel through space, use tools,
make deductions, and so on.

Another example happened to me a couple of years ago when I was working
in Europe.  One of the guys there was Norwegian, but had been living in
the U.S. for about eight years and spoke English without a trace of an
accent, so much so that we Americans thought of him as American when
conversing with our French colleagues.  But one day, two of us started
to speak in Pig Latin, confusing both the French guys and the Norwegian.
The Americans had all learned Pig Latin as kids, so we just assumed that
everyone who spoke English, especially those who spoke it as well as the
Norwegian did, would know it too.

-- 
KEN FAIR - U. Chicago Law  | Power Mac! | Net since '90 | Net.cop
kjfair@midway.uchicago.edu | CABAL(tm) Member | I'm w/in McQ - R U?
 The Constitution is more than simply the words.  It includes
 all of the legal, political, and social history of America.
