artifical intelligence

[Arthur]

Alex writes -

>The single line of text following this one is >one of the longest I've
>ever seen posted to Usenet - my compliments.

Yeah.  That seems to happen when I send from my on-line mailbaox, rahter
than from my desktop.  Annoying.  No idea why.


>Actually, I stick with our line from back in >the '80s, when I was doing
>speech recognition with IBM Research on a >strictly probabilistic basis:
>what we had on our T-shirts was
>P(A|B) = P(B|A)P(A)/P(B)
>and you know, there IS really nothing more to >it than this formula from
>1764... almost;-). And, it IS easy to program, >if programmers were in
>fact humble enough to study and apply >statistics and probability rather
>than looking for "artificial intelligence" >silver bullets!-)

I guess what I am obliquely addressing - as a dilletante, of course - is the
ultimate claims of the potential of AI.

AI is ultimately artificial not in that it artificially mimics
intelligence - but that it does so within the confines of an artifically
defined reality.  Though it can certainly be useful, as such.

I don't believe, though, that AI can ever deal adequately with the reality
of reality - the universe of *all* possibilities. On the question of risk
assessment, specifically.  Its not a matter of processing power, or
programming intelligance.  Ultimately, there is an unavoidable Nan that
can't be overcome.

Risk assessment in respect to the universe of all possiblities *is* the
survival instinct.  It's truly Frankensteinish to believe it can be mimiced.
IMO.

Art