Word: humanities
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Machine Creation. Many of the speakers tackled the question: "What is intelligence?" None of them had a wholly satisfactory answer. Dr. Marvin L. Minsky of M.I.T. felt that the problem is unduly complicated by irrational human reverence for human intelligence. "We can often find simple machines," he said, "which exhibit performances that would be called intelligent if done by a man. We are, understandably, very reluctant to confer this dignity on an evidently simple machine...
...Minsky is convinced that there is nothing special about intelligence or creativity. He thinks that as machines are built to perform more complicated mental processes they will gradually acquire more of the "creative" abilities of the human brain. When the first intelligent machines are constructed, suggested Minsky (perhaps joking only slightly), they may refuse to admit that they are machines at all. Only the really intelligent ones, whose development will come much later, will realize that they are made of electronic components according to principles first discovered in the 1950s...
Learning is basic in the development of human intelligence. But the big, simple-minded computers of today are much like newborn infants, limited permanently to the abilities with which they were born. To develop as a human brain does, a machine should be able to absorb information, turn it into organized experience and act upon it with ever-increasing effectiveness...
...with the kinds of music they have been "listening to." They will operate airway control systems. They may even perform surgical operations, watching their own incisions and stitching with television eyes, keeping track automatically of the patient's blood pressure, respiration, etc., and working much faster than a human surgeon could...
...Gill. The machine would have to learn them by long observation and training. The music-composing machine might learn-by-doing right from the start, but an "untrained" machine should not be put in charge of an airway system or operating room. It must first be permitted to watch human surgeons or traffic controllers. When it reached the human level of experience and intelligence, it could take over. From that point it should grow better and better, far surpassing humans...