Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
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2
. One noteworthy reason for this in-
ability to create an intelligent engine is that there has never been a clear and objective
definition of intelligence independent of personal opinions. Such a definition, if it
can be formed, is that it can also be used to judge its existence in non-human systems.
The purpose of this and the next chapter is to see if such a definition is possible.
1.2
Testing for Intelligence
It has always been assumed that people would recognize intelligence when they came
across it (see
The Imitation Game
below). This may be true. But to ensure that we
can do this unambiguously and independently of the human context we also need
to examine what is meant by intelligence, initially without reference to machines
or even people, and later to consider if an implementation is possible. If such an
implementation is not possible then we ought to ask, “why?”
Before we begin, there are certain tools of thought or methods of approach that
we must know and adopt. We need these tools to help us overcome our natural
prejudice in accepting a specification of intelligence and to achieve an unambiguous
description of it. This is driven by our wish to implement and recognize intelligent
behavior that will exist outside the human form. The main tool is 'Pragmatism' as
proposed by Charles Saunders Peirce, which is now described.
1.2.1
The Imitation Game
In a lecture series given by William James (James
1906
) at the Lowell Institute in
Boston he relates in Lecture II (p. 27) the following story (James 1842-1910).
...
being with a camping party in the mountains, I returned from a solitary ramble to find
everyone engaged in a ferocious metaphysical dispute. The
corpus
of the dispute was a
squirrel—a live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; while over
against the trees opposite side a human being was imagined to stand. This human witness
tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly round the tree, but no matter how fast he
goes, the squirrel moves as fast in the opposite direction and always keeps the tree between
himself and the man, so that never a glimpse of him is caught. The resultant metaphysical
problem is this:
Does the man go round the squirrel or not?
The issue here was really what do you
want
'to go round' to mean in practical terms.
If you want 'to go round' to mean successive compass positions until you return to
your starting point then you do go round the squirrel. If you want it to mean that you
are first in front of him then to the side etc. then in this case you don't go round him.
2
http://www.bcs-sgai.org/micomp/.
