[OT] How long before..

[Peter M. Brigham]

On Aug 1, 2012, at 12:34 PM, Bob Sneidar wrote:

> Sorry this is one of my many pet peeves. Everything hinges on what you mean by "learn" and "act". Tell me this, what new thing has a computer learned that no human knew before? And how did the computer act on that new knowledge? I think AI is an illusion, produced by the old trick of bait and switch. We talk in the abstract of "learning and acting" as though it was like what humans do, and then when it gets to the actual point of proving it we are told, "well, we don't mean THAT exactly." 

One of my favorite quotes: "If the brain were simple enough for us to understand, we'd be too simple-minded to understand it." As someone who has 40+ years experience in dealing with how minds and brains work, I am firmly convinced that we will never *design* an artificial intelligence. I doubt that our brains are capable of grasping the level of complexity involved. It is just possible that we will be able to construct an artificial system that could *evolve* into something like an AI, but how this could be approached is not at all clear. 

Wow, this is waaaaay off topic. But interesting.

-- Peter

Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig