similar reasons. It will represent the number 2 not just by the two bits
"10", but as a full-fledged concept the way we do, replete with associa-
tions such as its homonyms "too" and "to", the words "couple" and
"deuce", a host of mental images such as dots on dominos, the shape of
the numeral '2', the notions of alternation, evenness, oddness, and on
and on ... With all this "extra baggage" to carry around, an intelligent
program will become quite slothful in its adding. Of course, we could
give it a "pocket calculator", so to speak (or build one in). Then it could
answer very fast, but its performance would be just like that of a
person with a pocket calculator. There would be two separate parts to
the machine: a reliable but mindless part and an intelligent but fallible
part. You couldn't rely on the composite system to be reliable, any
more than a composite of person and machine is necessarily reliable.
So if it's right answers you're after, better stick to the pocket calculator
alone-don't throw in the intelligence!Question: Will there be chess programs that can beat anyone?
Speculation: No. There may be programs which can beat anyone at
chess, but they will not be exclusively chess players. They will be
programs of general intelligence, and they will be just as temperamen-
tal as people. "Do you want to play chess?" "No, I'm bored with chess.
Let's talk about poetry." That may be the kind of dialogue you could
have with a program that could beat everyone. That is because real
intelligence inevitably depends on a total overview capacity-that is, a
programmed ability to '~ump out of the system", so to speak-at least
roughly to the extent that we have that ability. Once that is present,
you can't contain the program; it's gone beyond that certain critical
point, and you just have to face the facts of what you've wrought.
Question: Will there be special locations in memory which store parameters
governing the behavior of the program, such that if you reached in
and changed them, you would be able to make the program smarter or
stupider or more creative or more interested in baseball? In short,
would you be able to "tune" the program by fiddling with it on a
relatively low level?
Speculation: No. It would be quite oblivious to changes of any particular
elements in memory, just as we stay almost exactly the same though
thousands of our neurons die every day(!). If you fuss around too
heavily, though, you'll damage it, just as if you irresponsibly did
neurosurgery on a human being. There will be no "magic" location in
memory where, for instance, the "IQ" of the program sits. Again, that
will be a feature which emerges as a consequence of lower-level be-
havior, and nowhere will it sit explicitly. The same goes for such things
as "the number of items it can hold in short-term memory", "the
amount it likes physics", etc., etc.
Question: Could you "tune" an AI program to act like me, or like you-or
halfway between us?
(^678) Artificial Intelligence: Prospects