IUBio

Rickert on embedded computation (was re: science of consciousness.)

Patrick Juola patrick at gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk
Thu Apr 30 10:55:00 EST 1998


In article <6ia69h$lic at ux.cs.niu.edu> rickert at cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>patrick at gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk (Patrick Juola) writes:
>>In article <6ia3ho$ldc at ux.cs.niu.edu> rickert at cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>
>>>In a system running Win95, there is a location in RAM where the mouse
>>>pointer is stored.  The way Win95 manipulates the contents of that
>>>data is by displaying information on the visible screen, and using
>>>the services of the human sitting in front of that screen to move the
>>>mouse around.  Then it use the codes received on the mouse port for
>>>its update.  What is happening in the brain of the human operator has
>>>become an essential part of the computation.
>
>>Unfortunately, no.  The human uses the computer, and not vice versa.
>
>That's exactly right.  And as long as we maintain your way of
>thinking that will always be exactly right.  And therefore humans
>will use AI systems, and not vice versa.  And thus our AI systems are
>sentenced to always be no more than unintelligent slaves.  In short,
>with your mindset, the AI problem is and will forever remain
>unsolvable.
>
>>Any programmer who routes a "part of the computation" through the
>>I/O channel as anything other than a source of random numbers is,
>>well, crazy.  
>
>Damn.  Then those MRI scanners must just be using random numbers.

As far as the software is concerned, they do.  Otherwise the software
would crash if they ever turned it on *without* a human in the machine.

	-kitten




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