From: Greg Borenstein To: Joscha Bach Cc: Sebastian SCUll" Joi Ito , Ari Gesher , Martin Nowak <[email protected]> Subject: Re: MDF Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 00:56:54 +0000 , takashi ikegami Kevin Slavin , Jeffrey Epstein On Oct 23, 2013, at 11:09 AM, Joscha Bach < > wrote: The question of good benchmark tasks is haunting Al since its inception. Usually, when we identify a task that requires intelligence in humans (playing chess or soccer or Jeopardy, driving a car etc.) we end up with a kind of very smart (chess-playing, car-driving) toaster. That being said, Al was always very fruitful in the sense that it arguably was the most productive and useful field of computer science, even if it fell short of its lofty goals. Without a commitment to understanding intelligence and mind itself, Al as a discipline may be doomed, because it will lose the cohesion and direction of a common goal. I think this issue of the changing definition of intelligence being a moving goal post is absolutely critical, Joscha. And it's one that long-predates 20th century digital computation-based AI efforts. Recently, I've been reading the work of Jessica Riskin, a Stanford historian who studies the long history of AI and Artificial Life. Specifically, Riskin's been writing about a strange phase in the history of mechanical automatons that happened in the second half of the 18th century. Previously, automatons had always been built with their mechanism in one place (i.e. in a hidden box or platform) that then drove their figures via a series of rods or connectors. The figures, the representative part of the automaton were like the birds in a cuckoo clock with no relation to the mechanism that made them move. Then, suddenly, in the second half of the 18th century, a series of automaton makers started to produce automatons that were built in a way that was analogous to the thing they represented. The French maker Vaucanson built a flute-playing automaton that had