[FRIAM] have we moved on?

[Martin C. Martin]

Phil Henshaw wrote:
> I was curious about the film you were talking about, "Mind in the
> Machine", and Googled it, coming across several things including its
> origin and a simple statement by an Australian journalist (quoted below)
> of Turing's idea of the test one would apply to measure success in
> reproducing intelligence. 
> 
> I read the statement as saying if you're able to imitate something by
> some other means (say behaviors of people by computers), in a way that
> an observer doesn't notice the discrepancy, you've made the real thing.
> I expect that's not quite accurate, and the current thinking has
> evolved.   Can anyone say where the concept is headed?   

The field of Artificial Intelligence no longer talks at all about 
general intelligence, the human mind, or anything like that.  The lone 
exception might the the natural language community, who of course are 
try to replicate something human specific.  But they still don't talk 
about "human equivalence" or anything like that.

After the hype for AI in the 60s and 70s, there was a backlash in the 
80s.  Kind of what happened to ideas like "virtual reality" or "dot 
com."  In search of respectability, AI has become largely applied 
statistics and focused on near term results.

For someone like me who wants to explore principles and methods that 
point the way to full intelligence, this is all very depressing.  Like 
wanting to study cognitive psychology during behaviorism.

Best,
Martin