-----Original Message-----
From: Lofti Zadeh [mailto:zadeh@eecs.berkeley.edu]
Sent:
To:
Subject: answers to questions/DeLeo
Dear Jim:
The
questions which you sent to me are centered on AI. They
are well posed and touch upon
important issues. Many involve
assessment
of causality. As is almost
always the case, when we ask "What caused A?
“there is a complex of causes
which are not equal in importance. In
this perspective, when I answer
the question " What caused A?"
it
should be understood that I
focus only on those causes which in my view
are of primary importance. I
have to underscore that my view may or may
not reflect the consensus.
Question l (Jim
DeLeo). In my talk “Toward Human Level
Intelligence -- Is it Achievable?" I respond, in part, to this
question. The intellectual
leadership of AI had committed AI to
symbolic logic, to the exclusion
of almost everything else. It took AI
close to three decades to open
the door to probability theory. AI has
never welcomed fuzzy logic even
though fuzzy logic is of direct
relevance to AI . Will it take
two decades for this to happen?
As I point
out in my talk, achievement of human level machine
intelligence is a challenge that
is fundamentally hard to meet. Passing
the Turing test is not on the
horizon.
Question 2. (Jerry McLaughlin) Given the exaggerated expectations and
unrealistic promises of the AI
community, it is not surprising that its
failures to deliver have
brought harsh criticism. Today, AI's youthful
braggadocio has been forgiven
and its real accomplishments are widely
recognized and treated with
respect.
Question 3. (Chuck Selden ) The main limitation, in my view, is not
hardware or software but
brainware. If we had computers that are
thousand times more powerful
than what we have today, we would not know
how to use them to come
significantly closer to passing the Turing test.
Question 4. (Gary
Berg-Cross) I wish I knew. There is no
simple definition.
Question 5. (
symbiotically by a human. Google is a case in point. By itself, Google
is not very effective as a
diagnostic tool. But it can be very
effective when used by a medical specialist. I recall
reading an
article in the N.Y. Times about
remarkable successes of Google when used
in this fashion.
Question 6. (Augie Turano) As I
point out in my talk, a prerequisite
to achievement of human level machine intelligence is mechanization
of
natural language understanding
-- an understanding which is still far away.
Question 7. (Doron Shalvi ) Medical AI systems will be very useful in a
support capacity. Total reliance
on an AI system is not in sight. A
major problem is that much of
medical knowledge is perception-based. At
this juncture, machines are not
designed to deal with perception-based
information. To deal with
perception-based information what is needed is
fuzzy logic. I discussed this
issue in my paper "A New Direction in AI
-- Toward a Computational Theory of Perceptions," AI Magazine,
200l.
Question 8. (
certainly be of help but not in
a major way.
Question 9. (Carl Leonard) To do
justice to this question a lengthy
answer is required Advances on a narrow front will not be
sufficient.
Question l0.(Xiaoli Zhang) This
is likely what is to happen. Robotic
Languages will necessarily be very different from human
languages.
Semantic imprecision, ambiguity and context-dependence
will not be allowed.
Question ll. (Jerry Chandler) I am not sure what is meant
by chemical
logic. What may be of relevance
is a book which was published a few
years ago under the title of
" Fuzzy Logic in Chemistry."
I tried to
answer the questions which were posed to the best of
my ability. Please accept my
apology for the brevity of my answers.
With my warm regards.
Sincerely,
Lotfi