Until next week,Dateline:02/23/97
SO said neural net pioneer Bruce Molloy, physicist-turned-entrepreneur founder of the Molloy Group, where but for the grace of God or any other venture capitalist (or the lack thereof) went I. Me, I've always thought it sounded crazy, but I also always knew it would work. You may be pardoned for asking what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about an apparently intelligent computer program, or to use Reuter correspondent Sam Fromartz' charmingly quaint 6th century BC term, "electronic brain." Why intelligent? Because, as Fromartz puts it, it "uses cognitive processing to solve problems, which means it can understand ordinary phrases, engage in a dialogue to arrive at a solution and remember what transpired so it knows what to do the next time the same problem occurs." But why apparently?
Well, for one thing, I haven't actually experienced the program myself, and if I had to pick just one domain in which to exercise healthy scepticism and remain at Condition Red, shields up, photon torpedoes ready, and phazers on stun for possible hype attacks dressed up in all manner of cloaking devices, machine intelligence is it. And for another thing, intelligence depends on your definition, and maybe you don't like mine.
My definition of intelligence includes a predisposition to respond spontaneously, in some way, to new "input" or information, to make sense of partial or garbled information (such as most of what you and I say or write!), and to learn from experience. Molloy's help desk program is said to do all of these things, just like a help desk person would, or maybe even better.
(If you're interested, help me create a section on Definition of Terms used in the machine intelligence context, so as to provide an evolving set of operational definitions to help researchers and everyone, if you like.)
If the notion of machine intelligence sounds just too outlandish for words, too much like science fiction, just consider that the same day Molloy was making headlines, British scientists announced they had created the world's first clone of an adult animal (read the news report). Her name is Dolly. Hellooooo, Dolly. OK, so she's "only" a sheep, but she could just as easily have been a human, and probably would have been if the scientists involved were just a bit madder.
Dolly was "created," so to speak, at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute from a single cell taken from the udder of an adult sheep, turned into an embryo and then implanted in a surrogate mother. She's already seven months old.
(I'm off on a tangent here, but I can't repress the observation that ethical and legal constraints notwithstanding, we WILL clone a human. I'd volunteer to be cloned, in a heartbeat. I'd be driven to it by curiosity--a crucial aspect and component of my (and your) sentience. Wouldn''t you be fascinated beyond measure to watch yourself growing up? Or would it really be yourself you're watching? Boy, it sure would clear up a whole passle of 'potheses in the cognitive sciences. Uh-oh, I feel another major tangent coming on, so I'd better quit while I'm only so far behind.)
Where were we? Ah, yes. Molloy's Amazing Corporate Helpdesk Information Network Embodying (M.A.C.H.I.N.E.) Intelligence. Evidence that it stacks up to something more than hype can be discerned from Molloy's client list, which includes such hard-nosed businesses as COMP USA and Toys R Us.
But here's what I find most significant: It seems Molloy's current focus is on adapting the program to the Net. Anything that inserts intelligence into the Net (no disrespect intended to you, gentle reader) is another evolutionary accretion toward the day when Kenneth Boulding's "break boundary" or John von Neumann's "complexity barrier" will be breached within the Net, and "it" will start asking us questions. It will display signs of sentience.
Perhaps we might somehow manage to resist the curiosity-led temptation to clone ourselves, but will it have such scruples?
Stay tuned to this network for further weekly bulletins. It is coming to get you. Oh dear, it's probably reading this message...
(Fromartz' full story on Molloy is here.)
Until next week,
NEXT WEEK: MISTIC: Educating the Infant Machine.