Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #00178
To: "'Scott Martin'" a1a96566@bc.sympatico.ca, beam@corp.sgi.com
From: Wilf Rigter Wilf.Rigter@powertech.bc.ca
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 17:02:40 -0800
Subject: [alt-beam] Minski's nefarious plot
Hi Scott,
This opinion suggests quite the opposite!
From Grey Walter's Robotic Turtles By Mark Dery=20
Despite their fame in Walter's day, Elmer, Elsie and the cyber-turtles =
they
spawned were relegated to the shadows of history when cybernetics was
rendered pass=E9 by the emerging discipline of artificial intelligence =
(AI).
With its "top-down" emphasis on human-style abstract reasoning, AI =
dismissed
the uncannily lifelike behavior of Walter's robots as trivial.=20
Now however, with the advent of the science of artificial life -- whose
keystone is the concept of "emergent behavior" -- Elmer and Elsie's
meanderings may be honored as the first small steps in the great leap =
toward
robot evolution. Fittingly the brainless but evolutionarily unstoppable
insect robots built by MIT's Rodney Brooks owe much to the Walter =
turtle
Brooks himself built as a boy. If silicon consciousness ever rises from =
the
laboratories of artificial life and artificial intelligence =
researchers, it
may come to us by way of a trail that begins with turtle tracks.=20
http://eagle.online.discovery.com/cgi-bin/conversations_view/dir88189428=
7/De
ad%20Inventors%20Graveyard/Grey%20Walter
Wilf Rigter mailto:wilf.rigter@powertech.bc.ca
=09
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Martin [SMTP:a1a96566@bc.sympatico.ca]
> Sent: Thursday, February 04, 1999 11:07 AM
> To: beam@corp.sgi.com
> Subject: Re: Schmitt trigger
>=20
>=20
> >>After all, what about Marvin Minski's Perceptrons? That was back
> >>in the 1960's, they used vacuum tubes, but had learning machine =
robots
> >>long before mobile CPU based robots.
>=20
> >Minski, a shining light for all of us! (don't worry, I didn't say =
God)
> >
> Nor would I. Minski and his colleages went out of their way to
> suppress AI research that didn't fit their "vision" setting AI back
> by at least 20 years...and thats in the history books.
>=20
>=20
> ScottyDogma
>=20
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