From: Godfrey Steve (sg698@ecs.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Tue May 01 2001 - 13:52:39 BST
Re: Turing: Computing Machinery and Intelligence Marinho Francis-Oladipo
>>TURING:
>>Following this suggestion we only permit digital computers to take part
>>in our game.
>Marinho:
>I do not disagree with him on this viewpoint but I'm not sure i understand
>his manner of reasoning for the exclusion. He declares that a human being
>created entirely from a single cell would probably not be categorised as a
>thinking machine and i am inclined to agree because even though the new
>human has not been born in the usual manner, he or she more than likely
>will be as human as one can be. I however do not understand what that has
>to do with insisting that all the engineers be of the same sex.
Godfrey:
I think that Turing was implying that a group of engineers of different
sexes would be able to create a machine through normal reproductive
methods
which would lead to us having gained no ground, as we would have learnt
nothing.
>>TURING:
>>It is difficult to frame the definitions so as to satisfy these three
>>conditions. One might for instance insist that the team of engineers
>>should be all of one sex, but this would not really be satisfactory, for
>>it is probably possible to rear a complete individual from a single cell
>>of the skin (say) of a man.
>Marinho:
>Turing, having allowed only digital computers to be included in this
>experiment, then goes on to expansiate and define a digital computer. His
>definition makes a comparison to a human computer.
Godfrey:
I am not sure this is what Turing is doing at this stage. I think he
was eliminating the possibility that the engineers could simply use
cloning to produce a machine that had a mind.
>>TURING:
>>These arguments take the form, "I grant you that you can make machines do
>>all the things you have mentioned but you will never be able to make one
>>to do X." Numerous features X are suggested in this connexion I offer a
>>selection:
>>Be kind, resourceful, beautiful, friendly, have initiative, have a sense
>>of humour, tell right from wrong, make mistakes, fall in love, enjoy
>>strawberries and cream, make some one fall in love with it, learn from
>>experience, use words properly, be the subject of its own thought, have as
>>much diversity of behaviour as a man, do something really new.
>Marinho:
>All of these deformities, are similar to the argument concerning emotion,
>consciousness. Turing identifies this and provides some argument in his
>favour to combat these. For my own addition to his cause, What does beauty
>have to do with intellect? There are lots of examples in the world of
>beautiful people who are not reknown for their intelligence and by the same
>token, there are intelligent people who would not be categorised as
>beautiful. By the way, what happened to beauty being in the eyes of the
>beholder?
>On the matter of learning from experience, there are lots of machines that
>have self modifying code. There are neural networks that show learning by
>following some training rule. An example is the learning of simple logic
>functions by the single layer percptron using the perceptron training rule.
>Turing agrees when he refers to the machine being the subject of its own
>thought.
Godfrey:
I agree that a lot of the attributes mentioned in this argument have
little
to do with intelligence but are simply trying to imitate humans more
closely.
But for a machine to pass the Unrestricted Turing test, does the machine
not have
to be Indistinguishable form a human in every way. I agree that the
machine can
learn from feedback from its actions, but is this really experience. I
think that
experience implies that the machine has actually understood what has
happened, and as
a result updated its self in some way. A machine cannot fully
understand what is
happening until it has been grounded, until then it is simply following
rules
supplied by its program.
Steve Godfrey
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