User: jgm

Imagination? Inference?

On: Company Claims Development of True AI

"AI" is not "I" until it can perform logical inference and imagine possibilities.

For example, it needs to be able to "see" that a conslusion follows from certain premises when that conclusion has never before been a part of its experience.

For example:
- things that fly have wings
- a man with wings could possibly fly

I'd like to see a program that comes up with that, having as input only sensory experience of flying things and of men. First it would need to form an abstraction of flight and then it would need to form a motivation for experimentally applying that abstraction to abstractions where it is absent.

And then there is the whole issue of self-consciousness...

I'd like some comments on this bit by C. S. Lewis

On: The Decline of Science and Technology in America

Anyone care to comment on this?

Link

Use Iridium together with Skytel (or Nextel, etc)

On: Searching for a Satellite Pager?

...and do it mostly without dups.

This script or one like it can page your "normal" two-way pager, sense whether you got it, and only send via Iridium if not. You can't rely on Iridium only, esp. in areas with many obstructions, because the network can't ask the pager if the message was received -- that is, it is one way only and therefore less reliable.

http://homepage.mac.com/jogomu/jgm.org/snpp_iridiu m.html