artificial intelligence Papers

The concept of an agent has become important in both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and mainstream computer science. Our aim in this paper is to point the reader at what we perceive to be the most important theoretical and practical issues associated with the design and construction of intelligent agents. For convenience, we divide these issues into three areas (though as the reader will see, the divisions are at times somewhat arbitrary). Agent theory is concerned... Read more

If Heidegger and Wittgenstein are right, human beings are much more holistic than neural nets. Intelligence has to be motivated by purposes in the organism and other goals picked up by the organism from an on-going culture. If the minimum unit of analysis is that of a whole organism geared into a whole cultural world, neural nets as well as symbolically programmed computers, still have a very long way to go. Read more

Of all the legacies of the era of the sixties, three colorful, not to say garrulous, "personalities" that emerged from the early days of artificial intelligence research are worth mentioning: -ELIZA, the Rogerian psychotherapist; -PARRY, the paranoid; and (as part of a younger generation) -RACTER, the "artificially insane" raconteur. All three of these "characters" are natural language processing systems that can "converse" with human beings (or with one another) in English. That is, when presented with sentences in English... Read more

Artificial intelligence researchers attempting to create engaging apparently living creatures may find important insight in the work of artists who have explored the idea of believable character. In particular appropriately timed and clearly expressed emotion is a central requirement for believable characters. We discuss these ideas and suggest how they may apply to believable interactive characters which we call "believable agents". Read more

The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose has received a great deal of both praise and criticism. This review discusses philosophical aspects of the book that form an attack on the “strong” AI thesis. Eight different versions of this thesis are distinguished, and sources of ambiguity diagnosed, including different requirements for relationships between program and behaviour. Excessively strong versions attacked by Penrose (and Searle) are not worth defending or attacking, whereas weaker versions remain problematic.... Read more

Artificial intelligence researchers predict that "thinking machines" will take over our mental work, just as their mechanical predecessors were intended to eliminate physical drudgery. Critics have argued with equal fervor that "thinking machine" is a contradiction in terms. Computers, with their foundations of cold logic, can never be creative or insightful or possess real judgment. Although my own understanding developed through active participation in artificial intelligence research, I have now come to recognize a larger... Read more

This article can be viewed as an attempt to explore the consequences of two propositions. (1) Intentionality in human beings(and animals) is a product of causal features of the brain I assume thisis an empirical fact about the actual causal relations between mental processes and brains It says simply that certain brain processes are sufficient for intentionality.(2) Instantiating a computer program is never by itself a sufficient condition ofintentionality The main argument of this paper... Read more

It seems to me that the ingredients of most theories both in Artificial Intelligence and in Psychology have been on the whole too minute, local, and unstructured to account–either practically or phenomenologically–for the effectiveness of common-sense thought. The "chunks" of reasoning, language, memory, and "perception" ought to be larger and more structured; their factual and procedural contents must be more intimately connected in order to explain the apparent power and speed of mental activities. Similar feelings... Read more

Much of the Artificial Intelligence community is now aware of a computer simulation of paranoid processes developed by the Colby group at Stanford. The model (called PARRY) has been available for interviewing on the ARPA network and thousands of interviews have been conducted with several versions of the model. During the long period of development of the model, we have been aware of the limitations of various alternative programming approaches to designing an algorithm capable... Read more

I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?", and begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey. We may hope that machines will eventually... Read more