Re: forward masking (was: Re: Hugos)

From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Sun Dec 17 2000 - 21:07:18 MST


From: "Damien Broderick" <d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au>
>Will AIs be prey to
> such lexical pranks in their own code re-writing? Scary if so...
>
> Damien Broderick

I don't think AIs would mimic our slips, because the glitch (in this case)
is in the interface (keyboard), and for AI to make these syntactical errors
would require replicating (in an AI android) the inherent deficiencies in
human data entry capabilities. But perhaps some crafty roboticists will
deliberately incorporate these all-too-human idiosyncrasies for the sake of
compatibility. This would somewhat parallel the reasons for producing the
"qwerty" keyboard, which was purposely designed to slow down typists, so
that they wouldn't lock up the striking mechanisms of early typewriters. If
AI emerges from "out of control" neuro-net parallelism and Alife, then it
would manifest at least as many lexical pranks and verbal glitches as any
number of (transitional) humans. The possibility that these glitches would
spontaneously resemble those made by human typists and speakers seems to me
quite small.
Hence... Scary if so...
but full of significance.

Stay hungry,

--J. R.
3M TA3

=====================
 I think I'd add "free will" to the list of "consciousness" "phlogiston"
 "vitalism" and "mind" as examples of useless hypotheses.



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