Artificial Intelligence FWIW

From: Lester Zick (lesterDELzick_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 10/14/04 

Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 15:19:50 GMT

                              Artificial Intelligence FWIW
                                             ----------

Let's just cut out the middleman here and figure out what the term
artificial intelligence means or at least how to address the subject
definitive terms. Now, analogous to the case of free will and abstract
information and knowledge, we find that artificial intelligence is a
subspecies of intelligence. So we don't really need to concern
ourselves with the term artificial until we understand what the term
intelligence means.

Anyone can do the artifice. Behaviorists have their hammers and
tongs, a bit primitive perhaps but nonetheless effective for training
animals. Cognitive scientists have their electrodes, MRI's, and drug
implants. And ai'er's have their computer models and simulations. So
artifices aren't really the issue. In fact in the half century or so
since Turing's formative work and subsequent development of the
computer and software, the issue of an artifice by means of which to
implement artificial intelligence has disappeared in any event.

So, if the problem in artificial intelligence or ai is not one of the
artifice, it has to be one of the intelligence. In other words, the
whole problem of artificial intelligence seems to boil down to a
question no one except science fiction writers appear particularly
anxious to address. And that is what the hell is intelligence?

Regards - Lester