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Re: John McCarthy R.I.P.

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> From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail...@dmitry-kazakov.de>
> We know how car functions, that is why there exist objective
> features which characterize a car. These features are used as
> criteria for comparison (for the properties of interest). All
> this does not apply to intelligence.

For a car we know in detail at multiple levels from overall system
function down to chemistry and mechanics, how a car functions. We
don't yet know so well how a brain functions, but in recent years
it's become apparent that the brain is a loose collection of
special-purpose processors, to perform routine data-processing
functions such as visual-feature extraction and muscle-servo, and
specialized but complex problem-solving functions such as building
a model of what's in the visual field, fitted into a longer-term
model of the entire local geography, and figuring out how to
perform navigation and hand-arm manipulation actions upon external
objects. Accordingly I believe it would be appropriate to define
classes of tasks performed by the various processing centers of the
brain, and then to try to devise computer systems to perform each
of these tasks.

Several data-processing tasks have already been successfully
automated: OCR, voice-input, parameterization of graphical input,
musical-tune recognition, crawling/walking/hopping. One high-level
almost-real-world problem-solving task has been demonstrated:
Solving some of the kinds of natural-language riddles/puzzles per
the "Jeopardy!" TV show. See below for my suggestions for
additional kinds of special-domain almost-real-world
problem-solving tasks.

> >> Continuing in that vein there is actually only one operation needed: the
> >> operation "THINK". (:-))
> > Why is that so?  That is what is termed an allegation -- and it is
> > downright silly.
> Less silly than counting ADD, SUB, MUL, MOV instructions. At
> least it is known for sure that the instruction THINK does
> thinking, which cannot be said about any existing combination of
> ADD, SUB, MUL, MOV...

I disagree. Defining a name as equivalent to some natural-language
phrase, without any idea what the phrase *really* means, doesn't
contribute to the discussion.

> 2. Relevant (functional) car features like speed, fuel
> consumption, safety etc are *measurable*. Relevant features of
> intelligence are unknown.

I disagree. "Jeopardy!" is already a feature that can be measured,
and in fact has been measured, where the computer did quite well.
Task-test-sets exists for other kinds of problem-solving. For
example, mathematical problem solving can be tested by questions
from any of the High School math contest (University of Santa
Clara), Putnam math contest (nationwide), or American Mathematical
Monthly "Elementary Problems" (similar to high-end of high-school
questions or low-end of Putnam questions. I propose that A.I.
engineers who have not previously taken these tests, and in
particular haven't seen the archives of past questions, but who are
competant at high-school-graduate mathematics, should be shown the
first set (one exam, i.e. one year of high school or Putnam, or one
issue of Elementary Problems) of one of these sequences of prolem
sets, and asked to devise a smart system that can solve these
questions and "any similar". Then after verifying the smart system
can indeed solve that one set of problems, feed it the second of
the particular sequence and see how it does, probably not well at
all. Then have engineeers upgrade the smart system until it is
flexible enough to do a good job with both of those first two
problem sets. Then test it on the third, whereupon it probably
fails again. Iterate adding capability of handling one more single
set then testing on the next one after it. If at some point it
starts being able to solve problems it hasn't yet seen, from that
same sequence, we'll consider that a success, otherwise if it needs
upgrade for each new set of problems, then that's a failure.

Google and Bing have been working on another test set, users'
queries in their search engines, to try to present what the user
really is asking about before the other keyword matches. Last I saw
they haven't done a good job. But at least we have some sort of
test set by which to measure their progress by user satisfaction
vs. frustration, not a well-defined measure, but at least a crude
way to tell if they are doing a good job or not. If they ever get
to the point where I can ask a direct question to Google or Bing
and get back as first response a direct and correct answer to my
question, I'll consider that they have started to succeed.

Question: Who invented LISP?

Google:
  Lisp was originally created as a practical mathematical notation for
   computer programs, influenced by the notation of Alonzo Church's lambda
   calculus. It quickly ...
   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)
   [Text excerpt doesn't answer question, but the linked WikiPedia
    article has enough information to construct the answer, as I've
    done later below.]

Bing:
  Scheme is a statically scoped and properly tail-recursive dialect
   of the Lisp programming language invented by Guy Lewis Steele Jr.
   and Gerald Jay Sussman.
   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)
   [Text excerpt isn't even on the correct topic, namely the
    original invention of LISP, even though it links to same
    WikiPedia article as Google did.]
  Who invented the word LISP? ChaCha Answer: The word lisp has its
   origin in Old English and is taken from the word '-wlyspian'.
   www.chacha.com/question/who-invented-the-word-lisp
   [Seriously off-topic.]
.. several answers later:
  John McCarthy, the researcher who invented LISP and coined the ...
   reddit: the front page of the internet ... use the following search
   parameters to narrow your results: reddit:{name}
   www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/loa5e/john_mccarthy_the_resear
   cher_who_invented_lisp
   [Half correct answer, then irrelevant reddit navigation text.]

Correct answer:
 John McCarthy invented the concept of LISP as an adaption from
  Alonzo Church's lambda calculus, and then Steve Russell converted
  a modified form of that concept into a working implementation.

Google-groups-search-key: imtrgfdi

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John McCarthy R.I.P. RichD <r_delaney2001@yahoo.com> - 2011-11-04 13:17 -0700
  Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. RichD <r_delaney2001@yahoo.com> - 2011-11-09 13:17 -0800
    Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. casey <jgkjcasey@yahoo.com.au> - 2011-11-09 14:04 -0800
      Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2011-11-10 09:45 +0100
        Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. casey <jgkjcasey@yahoo.com.au> - 2011-11-10 01:24 -0800
          Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2011-11-10 12:14 +0100
        Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. Antti J Ylikoski <antti.ylikoski@aalto.fi> - 2011-11-10 11:38 +0200
          Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2011-11-10 11:54 +0100
            Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. Antti J Ylikoski <antti.ylikoski@aalto.fi> - 2011-11-10 14:09 +0200
              Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2011-11-10 14:46 +0100
                Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. seeWebInstead@rem.intarweb.org (Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) - 2011-11-13 18:00 -0800
                Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2011-11-14 12:07 +0100
                Towards true A.I. (was: John McCarthy R.I.P.) seeWebInstead@rem.intarweb.org (Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) - 2012-03-27 12:25 -0700
                Re: Towards true A.I. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-03-29 15:21 +0200
                Re: Towards true A.I. curt@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) - 2012-03-30 15:56 +0000
                Re: Towards true A.I. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-03-30 18:32 +0200
                Re: Towards true A.I. Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> - 2012-03-30 14:20 -0700
                Re: Towards true A.I. Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2012-03-30 15:01 -0700
                Re: Towards true A.I. seeWebInstead@rem.intarweb.org (Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) - 2012-04-21 15:53 -0700
                Re: Towards true A.I. casey <jgkjcasey@yahoo.com.au> - 2012-04-21 18:47 -0700
                Re: Towards true A.I. "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2012-04-22 10:03 +0100
                Re: Towards true A.I. Don Stockbauer <donstockbauer@hotmail.com> - 2012-04-22 04:10 -0700
                Re: Towards true A.I. Gary Forbis <forbisgaryg@msn.com> - 2012-04-02 19:46 -0700
                Re: Towards true A.I. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-04-03 09:51 +0200
                Re: Towards true A.I. Gary Forbis <forbisgaryg@gmail.com> - 2012-04-03 05:22 -0700
                Re: Towards true A.I. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-04-04 10:31 +0200
                Re: Towards true A.I. curt@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) - 2012-04-05 00:24 +0000
                Re: Towards true A.I. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-04-06 10:41 +0200
                Re: Towards true A.I. curt@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) - 2012-04-05 01:00 +0000
                Re: Towards true A.I. seeWebInstead@rem.intarweb.org (Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) - 2012-04-21 15:44 -0700
                Re: Towards true A.I. seeWebInstead@rem.intarweb.org (Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) - 2012-04-17 21:57 -0700
                Re: Towards true A.I. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-04-21 10:08 +0200
            Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. curt@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) - 2011-11-10 16:03 +0000
              Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. casey <jgkjcasey@yahoo.com.au> - 2011-11-10 12:16 -0800
                Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. "James" <no@spam.invalid> - 2011-11-10 13:00 -0800
              Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2011-11-10 21:50 +0100
                Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. curt@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) - 2011-11-10 21:07 +0000
                Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2011-11-11 11:43 +0100
                Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. curt@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) - 2011-11-12 22:38 +0000
                Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. casey <jgkjcasey@yahoo.com.au> - 2011-11-13 01:32 -0800
                Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. curt@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) - 2011-11-14 15:28 +0000
                Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2011-11-14 16:57 +0100
                Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. curt@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) - 2011-11-17 22:19 +0000
                Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2011-11-18 10:51 +0100
                Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. casey <jgkjcasey@yahoo.com.au> - 2011-11-14 11:42 -0800
                Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2011-11-13 12:45 +0100
    Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. RichD <r_delaney2001@yahoo.com> - 2011-12-14 10:28 -0800
  Re: John McCarthy R.I.P. seeWebInstead@rem.intarweb.org (Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) - 2011-11-13 16:00 -0800

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