Are we machines?

Chris Cogan (ccogan@sfo.com)
Sun, 28 Nov 1999 18:57:31 -0800

Chris
The following was intended originally to be a post to Evolution, but,
because of the bizarre way the list server formats outgoing mail to us
members, my e-mail program automatically routes replies to the original
sender rather than back to itself. To his credit, Stephen Jones sent me a
note letting me know that it had been sent to him rather than the list, and
that he was not going to respond to it on the list for that reason.

Stephen
> Here is yet another difference between humans and machines.
>
> We can recognise faces easily, even from acute angles and under adverse
> conditions. But surprisingly computers have great difficulty in even
knowing
> that it is a face they are supposed to recognise!
>
> This is more evidence that the basic AI assumption that humans are just
> machines is on the wrong track.

Chris
This is like someone arguing, in 1910, that the fact that adding machines
can't play chess is evidence that "the a basic AI assumption that humans are
just machines is on the wrong track." More likely, it's evidence that the
machines aren't well-programmed for this task. What will you say if, in a
few years, machines are able to recognize faces easily?

--Chris C

Now is the time for all good people to come to.