RE: [-empyre-] next (robotic) steps

[susan.aaron@utoronto.ca]

Complexity is whole and part, the difficulty is whose "whole" is it?

Personally I see the notion of complexity as an engagement of ongoing
interrelations.

Mapping the brain is only another action of these interrelations.
How important is it to do that? To locate or pin where these interrelations
occur, to further the "knowledge" format in which it, the brain, exists?

Moving from "world views" to interrelations, one can allow a robot to do
whatever it is required to overcome the limitations of the humans. In this way
we find what robots do that humans can't but base them not on what we "perceive"
or have retained in "knowledge" as human limits, but allow the notion of robot
to range within interrelations that are pleasant for our interrelations or
engagement.

The concern that robots may overstep the bounds of assistance, or revelation if
say it is for art, doesn't exist if you insist on interrelations or coordinates.
Philip Agre did some work on this, and in his early work stood against world
views, as directorial, and for improvisation, and he later used the notion of
coordinates in dealing with robotics. If we all exist in these coordinates then
robots work within the parameters of each, rather than with conflicting "world
views" and their construction would eventually reflect this.
Importantly, also, if the robots work of each, then it also recognizes that we
are active not existent in some one possessed world view.



As regards mimesis, it is of course a "copy" of something.  Technology provides
a potentially  useful and synchronized action, and if we use that interrelation
of actions, rather than as a copy than we are moving toward clarity in its use. 

Quoting Jim Andrews <jim@vispo.com>:

> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > [mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au]On Behalf Of Nicholas
> > Stedman
> > Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 7:31 PM
> > To: soft_skinned_space
> > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] next (robotic) steps
> >
> >
> > >what is the next most essential 'human' sense for a robot,
> > >in your opinion - artificial life - artificial intelligence
> > >- ethical robots - what would *your* priorities be?
> >
> >
> > Hello,
> > This is my first post to empyre.
> > In the last few years the idea has become quite popular that
> > intelligence is a complex system that arises from the interaction of
> > small, discreet particles performing simple tasks in relation to one
> > another. Very recently I've been hearing about 'dumb' machines. This
> > seems to remove the overarching goal of emulating complex behaviour, and
> > refocuses the energy on just exploring simple, 'dumb' tasks.
> > 'Intelligence, ethics and human priorities' it is said are far too
> > complex to represent through current technology, let alone understand
> > for ourselves. The New York Times Magazine has a small blurb on it this
> > week (you can read it online but have to subscribe). If anyone knows
> > about this topic it would be good to hear more.
> >
> > My questions to you then are what do you think of approaching machines
> > as 'dumb', as unlike us? Why use mimesis as a guiding principle in
> > robotic design instead of other principles and references, or are they
> > by definition mimetic? I ask because I'm currently confronting this in
> > my own work. Some of my machines to date have been explorations of the
> > boundary between things that are like us and things that aren't by
> > rolling them into the same object. Lately, I've been more curious about
> > machines that are complementary instead of similar to us, but these are
> > not necessarilly mutually exclusive ideas.
> >
> > Best,
> > Nicholas Stedman
> > http://nickstedman.banff.org
> 
> I wonder how this relates to the earlier observation about the 'animal'? As
> a species, there was certainly a time when our language capabilities did
> not
> include speech, or very much at all of conscious symbolic understanding,
> and
> that is recapitulated, to some extent, as we grow from babes.
> 
> How important is the notion of a 'world view' to the 'animal' or the
> 'dumb'?
> Not that they need be the same thing, of course.
> 
> "...a world view...is essentially a model of the world as the preson
> perceives it. the model contains information about all objects which are
> known to exist, the attributes of those objects and the relationships
> between them....To endow machines with similarly huge and intricate models
> of the world appears very difficult, and is certainly well byond our
> current
> capabilities (1988). One reason for this, which may be short-lived, is that
> the capacity of the largest computer memories is far less than that of the
> human brain. A more significant reason  is that no generally convenient
> method of representing  knowledge in a computer has yet been discovered.
> The
> major problem is not in storing knowledge but in recognizing when
> particular
> items are relevant, and in retrieving them as required. A simple list of
> facts is inadequate: the relationships between facts are of crucial
> importance. Attempts to represent such relationships by complex data
> structures always seem to founder on the same two difficulties.  The first
> is to know what relationships are relevant. The second is the time taken to
> locate and retrieve all information relevant to the problem at hand. This
> time rapidly becomes infeasible as the body of knowledge increases."
> from 'Computer Science--A Modern [1988] Introduction' by Goldschlager and
> Lister
> 
> ja
> http://vispo.com
> 
> 
> 
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> 


-- 
Susan Aaron, MA
416-544-9415
80 Montclair Ave, #303
Toronto, ON M5P 1P8