Speculation: No. An intelligent program will not be chameleon-like, any
more than people are. I t will rei yon the constancy of its memories, and
will not be able to flit between personalities. The idea of changing
internal parameters to "tune to a new personality" reveals a ridiculous
underestimation of the complexity of personality.Question: Will there be a "heart" to an AI program, or will it simply consist
of "senseless loops and sequences of trivial operations" (in the words of
Marvin Minsky6)?
Speculation: If we could see all the way to the bottom, as we can a shallow
pond, we would surely see only "senseless loops and sequences of
trivial operations"-and we would surely not see any "heart". Now
there are two kinds of extremist views on AI: one says that the human
mind is, for fundamental and mysterious reasons, unprogrammable.
The other says that you merely need to assemble the appropriate
"heuristic devices-multiple optimizers, pattern-recognition tricks,
planning algebras, recursive administration procedures, and the like",1
and you will have intelligence. I find myself somewhere in between,
believing that the "pond" of an AI program will turn out to be so deep
and murky that we won't be able to peer all the way to the bottom. If
we look from the top, the loops will be invisible, just as nowadays the
current-carrying electrons are 'invisible to most programmers. When
we create a program that passes the Turing test, we will see a "heart"
even though we know it's not there.Question: Will AI programs ever become "superintelligent"?
Speculation: I don't know. It is not clear that we would be able to
understand or relate to a "superintelligence", or that the concept even
makes sense. For instance, our own intelligence is tied in with our
speed of thought. If our reflexes had been ten times faster or slower,
we might have developed an entirely different set of concepts with
which to describe the world. A creature with a radically different view
of the world may simply not have many points of contact with us. I
have often wondered if there could be, for instance, pieces of music
which are to Bach as Bach is to folk tunes: "Bach squared", so to speak.
And would I be able to understand them? Maybe there is such music
around me already, and I just don't recognize it, just as dogs don't
understand language. The idea of superintelligence is very strange. In
any case, I don't think of it as the aim of AI research, although if we
ever do reach the level of human intelligence, superintelligence will
undoubtedly be the next goal-not only for us, but for our AI-pro-
gram colleagues, too, who will be equally curious about AI and
superintelligence. It seems quite likely that AI programs will be ex-
tremely curious about AI in general-understandably.Question: You seem to be saying that AI programs will be virtually identical
to people, then. Won't there be any differences?Artificial Intelligence: Prospects 679