Here's why we should all stop and think about how we intend technology to be put to use. This is a quote from the project's home page:
"Recent work with schools in Maine has shown the huge value of using a laptop across all of one's studies, as well as for play. Bringing the laptop home engages the family. In one Cambodian village where we have been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home."
There's so many flaws in their reasoning I'll just let that speak for itself. Maybe they should just go back to developing computers for schools in Maine.
I think you're absolutely right, the article (yes I rtfa) contains quite a lot of the ghost of good, old-fashionead ai (gofai).
I am working on a degree in HCI, and I am getting more and more annoyed at the lack of serious critical thinking in the field. Instead, we're getting buzzwords from marketing departments. Terms like "smart"-phones, context-"aware" computing, computers "perceiveing" the world etc sound to me like unsuccessful AI from the 50's reborn in new shiny clothes.
The problem with articles like this is that they are purely machine centered. Sure, they mention some mystical entity called "context", but where are the humans in human-computer interaction? Neglecting humans leads to two faulty assumptions: 1) A belief that human minds work in a manner that can be reproduced in a rule-based manner in computers ("Plans and situated actions" to paraphrase the title from Lucy Suchmans influental thesis). 2) That a system that was successfully "intelligent" (or "aware", "perceptive" or whatever) would indeed be something useful for us.
A lot of the comments so far have been about parents not enforcing enough discipline on their kids' gaming. Some games (i.e. WoW) have mechanisms to enforce strict gaming schedules. Parents simply enter the kid's account and set the weekly hours on which the account is active and playable.
This won't help anyone who's flunking out of college, but at least it's useful in high-school and below. Actually, it is tell-tale sign of young players (well, apart from immaturity that is). They tend to suddenly disconnect at sharp hours.
Of course, good parents will discuss the matter with their kids, and try to set the times to correspond to raid schedules and the like. Really strict (and IT-savvy) parents could of course set restrictions for just about anything on their router, but something tells me that that is a sign of bad communication between parents and kids.
Yea..... Makes me think... I used to play WoW way too much, to the point where it affected work as well as personal relationships. The question is, why am I reading/. instead of doing something useful right now?
Ouch. Thinking hurts. Better get back to that next post.
While I can agree at least with the possibility of tutorial aspects in Monopoly, I believe your reasoning is wrong because of Monopoly's godawful game mechanics. There really is no way of "protecting" or "budgeting" money when the winner of the game usually has emerged very early on in the game.
There are not that many games about money, but resource management can be symbolized in a number of different ways, e.g. natural resource cards in Catan, or placement of followers in Carcassonne to mention two of the currently most popular games. I'd much rather have my kids play a game where such decisions actually matter than a game where the winner is almost randomly determined once everybody has figured out the tactics.
How so? If one player gets really good properties and is on top, then the other players, if they are interested in winning, are going to team up in order to bring down the top player, so that he doesn't win.
No no, we were discussing Monopoly. You are thinking of Diplomacy.
One thing that people seem to forget in the discussion concerning immersion (after all, immersion is the real problem with instancing, no?) is the player being immersed.
I am a casual WoW player, and a long time pencil-and-paper roleplayer. I agree with those who say that pencil-and-paper roleplaying is more immersive than MMORPGs, but that has a lot to do with players wanting to become immersed and making an effort to become immersed.
I got to the point of being really tired of WoW after realising the huge amount of grinding at high levels. Repeatadly running the same areas or instances over and over again, killing the same mobs for some rare piece of equipment just doesn't cut it for me. Instances? Come on, it doesn't matter if the quests takes place in instances, the problem lies in other areas.
What if quests really felt like they mattered, and weren't just quickly sorted into a category (collaction, mob-killing, delivery, escort etc) to be solved as quickly as possible? What if you interacted with players as if they were part of the game-world?
Ok, the very fact that it is a computer game puts obstacles in the way. But perhaps those obstacles have nothing to do with game design? Perhaps a little make-believe on the players side is all that is needed? I switched to RPPvP, and after finding the right community, the game is fun and immersive again! I don't care about those who complain about instances. The problem of immersion sometimes lies in the player.
Actually, the stone age never ended. And neither did the iron age, copper age etc.
Those are just labels that arise out of convenience. Think about it, why "was" there no wood age? Dividing history into "ages" based on rather arbitrary categories is convenient at best, and grossly misleading at worst.
Re:Chinese Room, Phenomenology, bla, bla
on
The Baby Bootstrap?
·
· Score: 1
Re:Chinese Room, Phenomenology, bla, bla
on
The Baby Bootstrap?
·
· Score: 1
Regarding the Chinese Room argument, isn't that just an argument that the Turing Test isn't a good measure of strong AI, rather than that strong AI is impossible?
It is both an argument against the Turing Test as such and against mind as (only) a symbol-processing device.
As for the others, I'm not very familiar with them, but I can't think of any aspect of human intelligence which can't in theory be replicated by a computer. The rest, it seems, is semantics.
Incidentally, and since you mention it, semantics has proven to be one part of human intelligence that is notoriously difficult to model in a computer. As I attempt to point out above, your standpoint rests on some assumption about what human intelligence is. If you believe it to be a symbol processing device (which your reply implies), then I'm afraid you have to wrestle Searle and Dreyfus. If not, you may work around the problem by implementing, say, a neural network while making no claim at understanding exactly what it is that it does.
Chinese Room, Phenomenology, bla, bla
on
The Baby Bootstrap?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Well...
There are several arguments against the possibility of strong AI. First and foremost, there is disagreement on fundamental philosophical issues.
All proponents of strong AI have to somehow make a stand against at least John Searle's famous Chinese Room argument and Terry Winograd's phenomenological (and biological) account, in his book Computers and Cognition. Hubert Dreyfus provides, of course, an even deeper phenomenological argument in "What computers (still) can't do". (Dreyfus does give Neural Networks some chance, perhaps that is why the original poster is still enthusiastic about the "Baby Bootstrap"?)
Since their arguments are available in the links above and/or other places on the web, I will not repeat them here. My point is that anyone who is seriously interested in AI has to really consider their philosophical ground, and has to do so in the light of arguments against it. After all, the arguments pointed to above are still more recent than arguments for strong AI.
In other words, I would like to ask of (strong) AI proponents to answer a just what this "learning" is, that the baby bootstrap is subject to? What "knowledge" will it contain? Oh, and what about its means of "expression", "language" as you may call it?
People, there are other kinds of accidents than terrorism. What pilot in their right mind would want to fly a plane that won't respond to controls? Not many, fortunately:
"He [Don Winter, director of R&D at Boeing's Phantom Works research division in St Louis] has yet to convince the people who fly the planes. "In general, pilots are openly hostile," he says. "Frankly it surprises me, because of all of the options that they are facing right now - including being shot at or commandeered from the ground - this is their best one.""
Well, the pilots probably have a firmer grasp on accident statistics than Don Winter and most of the public. Soft walls would obvoiusly increase the risk for just about any kind of accident except hijacking.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's why we should all stop and think about how we intend technology to be put to use. This is a quote from the project's home page:
"Recent work with schools in Maine has shown the huge value of using a laptop across all of one's studies, as well as for play. Bringing the laptop home engages the family. In one Cambodian village where we have been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home."
There's so many flaws in their reasoning I'll just let that speak for itself. Maybe they should just go back to developing computers for schools in Maine.
http://www.laptop.org/faq.en_US.html
Didn't James Bond's car have something similar in "For Your Eyes Only"?
I think you're absolutely right, the article (yes I rtfa) contains quite a lot of the ghost of good, old-fashionead ai (gofai).
I am working on a degree in HCI, and I am getting more and more annoyed at the lack of serious critical thinking in the field. Instead, we're getting buzzwords from marketing departments. Terms like "smart"-phones, context-"aware" computing, computers "perceiveing" the world etc sound to me like unsuccessful AI from the 50's reborn in new shiny clothes.
The problem with articles like this is that they are purely machine centered. Sure, they mention some mystical entity called "context", but where are the humans in human-computer interaction? Neglecting humans leads to two faulty assumptions: 1) A belief that human minds work in a manner that can be reproduced in a rule-based manner in computers ("Plans and situated actions" to paraphrase the title from Lucy Suchmans influental thesis). 2) That a system that was successfully "intelligent" (or "aware", "perceptive" or whatever) would indeed be something useful for us.
A lot of the comments so far have been about parents not enforcing enough discipline on their kids' gaming. Some games (i.e. WoW) have mechanisms to enforce strict gaming schedules. Parents simply enter the kid's account and set the weekly hours on which the account is active and playable.
This won't help anyone who's flunking out of college, but at least it's useful in high-school and below. Actually, it is tell-tale sign of young players (well, apart from immaturity that is). They tend to suddenly disconnect at sharp hours.
Of course, good parents will discuss the matter with their kids, and try to set the times to correspond to raid schedules and the like. Really strict (and IT-savvy) parents could of course set restrictions for just about anything on their router, but something tells me that that is a sign of bad communication between parents and kids.
If there isn't, you should start one. Please teach us, O enlightened master!
Yea..... Makes me think... I used to play WoW way too much, to the point where it affected work as well as personal relationships. The question is, why am I reading /. instead of doing something useful right now?
Ouch. Thinking hurts. Better get back to that next post.
While I can agree at least with the possibility of tutorial aspects in Monopoly, I believe your reasoning is wrong because of Monopoly's godawful game mechanics. There really is no way of "protecting" or "budgeting" money when the winner of the game usually has emerged very early on in the game.
There are not that many games about money, but resource management can be symbolized in a number of different ways, e.g. natural resource cards in Catan, or placement of followers in Carcassonne to mention two of the currently most popular games. I'd much rather have my kids play a game where such decisions actually matter than a game where the winner is almost randomly determined once everybody has figured out the tactics.
The game itself isn't important. It's simply a good way of bringing a family together. When you have children, you'll understand ;o)
Kind of true, but wouldn't a good game fill that purpose too?
How so? If one player gets really good properties and is on top, then the other players, if they are interested in winning, are going to team up in order to bring down the top player, so that he doesn't win.
No no, we were discussing Monopoly. You are thinking of Diplomacy.
One thing that people seem to forget in the discussion concerning immersion (after all, immersion is the real problem with instancing, no?) is the player being immersed. I am a casual WoW player, and a long time pencil-and-paper roleplayer. I agree with those who say that pencil-and-paper roleplaying is more immersive than MMORPGs, but that has a lot to do with players wanting to become immersed and making an effort to become immersed. I got to the point of being really tired of WoW after realising the huge amount of grinding at high levels. Repeatadly running the same areas or instances over and over again, killing the same mobs for some rare piece of equipment just doesn't cut it for me. Instances? Come on, it doesn't matter if the quests takes place in instances, the problem lies in other areas. What if quests really felt like they mattered, and weren't just quickly sorted into a category (collaction, mob-killing, delivery, escort etc) to be solved as quickly as possible? What if you interacted with players as if they were part of the game-world? Ok, the very fact that it is a computer game puts obstacles in the way. But perhaps those obstacles have nothing to do with game design? Perhaps a little make-believe on the players side is all that is needed? I switched to RPPvP, and after finding the right community, the game is fun and immersive again! I don't care about those who complain about instances. The problem of immersion sometimes lies in the player.
Actually, the stone age never ended. And neither did the iron age, copper age etc. Those are just labels that arise out of convenience. Think about it, why "was" there no wood age? Dividing history into "ages" based on rather arbitrary categories is convenient at best, and grossly misleading at worst.
Edsger Dijkstra. It's one of my favorites too. :^)
Regarding the Chinese Room argument, isn't that just an argument that the Turing Test isn't a good measure of strong AI, rather than that strong AI is impossible?
It is both an argument against the Turing Test as such and against mind as (only) a symbol-processing device.
As for the others, I'm not very familiar with them, but I can't think of any aspect of human intelligence which can't in theory be replicated by a computer. The rest, it seems, is semantics.
Incidentally, and since you mention it, semantics has proven to be one part of human intelligence that is notoriously difficult to model in a computer. As I attempt to point out above, your standpoint rests on some assumption about what human intelligence is. If you believe it to be a symbol processing device (which your reply implies), then I'm afraid you have to wrestle Searle and Dreyfus. If not, you may work around the problem by implementing, say, a neural network while making no claim at understanding exactly what it is that it does.
There are several arguments against the possibility of strong AI. First and foremost, there is disagreement on fundamental philosophical issues.
All proponents of strong AI have to somehow make a stand against at least John Searle's famous Chinese Room argument and Terry Winograd's phenomenological (and biological) account, in his book Computers and Cognition. Hubert Dreyfus provides, of course, an even deeper phenomenological argument in "What computers (still) can't do". (Dreyfus does give Neural Networks some chance, perhaps that is why the original poster is still enthusiastic about the "Baby Bootstrap"?)
Since their arguments are available in the links above and/or other places on the web, I will not repeat them here. My point is that anyone who is seriously interested in AI has to really consider their philosophical ground, and has to do so in the light of arguments against it. After all, the arguments pointed to above are still more recent than arguments for strong AI.
In other words, I would like to ask of (strong) AI proponents to answer a just what this "learning" is, that the baby bootstrap is subject to? What "knowledge" will it contain? Oh, and what about its means of "expression", "language" as you may call it?
Unbelievable graphics? Gimme a decent steering wheel and force feedback already!
People, there are other kinds of accidents than terrorism. What pilot in their right mind would want to fly a plane that won't respond to controls? Not many, fortunately:
"He [Don Winter, director of R&D at Boeing's Phantom Works research division in St Louis] has yet to convince the people who fly the planes. "In general, pilots are openly hostile," he says. "Frankly it surprises me, because of all of the options that they are facing right now - including being shot at or commandeered from the ground - this is their best one."" Well, the pilots probably have a firmer grasp on accident statistics than Don Winter and most of the public. Soft walls would obvoiusly increase the risk for just about any kind of accident except hijacking.
"The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell." --Confucius