Re: Searle

Dan Clemmensen (Dan@Clemmensen.ShireNet.com)
Thu, 05 Feb 1998 22:10:54 -0500


Max More wrote:

> At 07:16 PM 2/4/98 -0800, [someone] wrote:
> >: Searle's chinese room is designed to show that strong AI can not be true
> ...
> >In my humble opinion it shows only that consciousness is complex.
>
> I haven't read all posts on this topic, but in some of the early ones, the
> phrase "strong AI" was being used at odds with the accepted usage in
> philosophy of mind. There it means not more-than-human AI, but
> consciousness being achievable purely through software without having to
> worry about the particular physical instantiation. In that sense of "strong
> AI", I too have major doubts. I'm not at all convinced that a massive look
> up table would be conscious. I would not want to replace my brain with
> software based on a lookup table. In practice, I don't expect to have to
> worry about this, since I doubt it will be practicable to build a mind in
> such a manner.

I'm not sure what you mean by a "lookup table", but almost any meaning
that makes sense would be a turing machine. So, you appear to believe
that "strong AI" is equivalent to saying that a intelligence is turing
computable,
and that you don't agree? What needs to be added? would continuous
analog elements of some sort suffice, or do you need quantum effects?

I don't have a strong opinion on this, but don't think it much matters
as its trivial to incorporate either analog or quantum elements in
any actual physical system, so the need for such elements will not
hinder the advent of an SI. In particular, the digital elements can
interact with humans, with the humans providing the necessary non-
turing portion of the intelligence.