Re: mind and body

Cliff Joslyn (joslyn@C3SERVE.C3.LANL.GOV)
Tue, 2 Jun 1998 11:12:03 -0600


Classically, the two camps of AI are (A) those wishing to make
machines which do smart things, and (B) those wishing to make machines
which are smart like people are smart.

It's an interesting suggestion that the latter goal cannot be
accomplished without making a WHOLE articificial human, or at least a
system whose inputs/output sensor/affector sub-systems are similar or
equivalent (how? structurally? functionally? informationally?
semiotically?) to a real human.

Personally, I don't think that's where the interesting issues
lie. Presumably the goal of (B) is to understand better how humans
ACTUALLY think. If not, there's a lot cheaper and easier (and more
fun!) way of making all the REAL humans you could ever want.

Then you could argue that the path to making an artificial human
should naturally go back through making an artificial dog, insect,
worm, plant, protozoa. In principle, each of these would also require
system-appropriate sensor/affector grounding. And, in fact, there's a
large research program going exactly in that direction (see, at least,
www.c3.lanl.gov/~joslyn/ISAS98).

O---------------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Member of the Technical Staff (Cybernetician at Large)
| Computer Research Group (CIC-3), Los Alamos National Laboratory
| Mail Stop B265, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA
| joslyn@lanl.gov www.c3.lanl.gov/~joslyn (505) 667-9096
V All the world is biscuit-shaped. . .