74 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
74 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
# Manifesto
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Machine inference – automated reasoning, the core of what gets called
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Artificial Intellegence – has ab initio been based on the assumption
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that the purpose of reasoning was to preserve truth. It is because this
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assumption is false that the project has thus far failed to bear fruit,
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that [Allan Turing's eponymous test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test) has yet to be passed.
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Of course it is possible to build machines which, within the constraints
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of finite store, can accurately compute theora of first order predicate
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calculus ad nauseam but such machines do not display behaviour which is
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convincingly intelligent. They are cold and mechanical; we do not
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recognise ourselves in them. Like the [Girl in the Fireplace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_in_the_Fireplace)'s beautiful
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clocks, they are precisely inhuman.
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As Turing's test itself shows, intelligence is a hegemonic term, a term
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laden with implicit propaganda. A machine is 'intelligent' if it can
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persuade a person that it is a person. By 'intelligent' we don't mean
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'capable of perfect reasoning'. We mean 'like us'; and in meaning 'like
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us' we are smuggling under the covers, as semantic baggage, the claim
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that we ourselves are intelligent.
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I might argue that perfect reasoning has little utility in a messy
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world, that to cope with the messiness of a messy world one needs messy
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reasoning. I shall not do so: the core of my argument is not that there
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is principle and value in the mode of reasoning that I propose, but
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precisely that it is – ruthlessly – unprincipled.
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In this thesis I shall argue that the purpose of real world argument is
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not to preserve truth but to achieve hegemony: not to enlighten but to
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persuade, not to inform but to convince. This thesis succeeds not if in
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some arid, clockwork, mechanical sense I am right, but if, having read
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it, you believe that I am.
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## On inference and explanation
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I wrote the first draft of this thesis thirty two years ago. In that
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draft I was concerned with the very poor explanations that mechanised
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inference systems were able to provide for their reasons for coming to
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the conclusions they did, with their unpersuasiveness. There was a
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mismatch, an impedance, between machine intelligence and human
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intelligence. Then, I did not see this as the problem. Rather I thought
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that the problem was to provide better explanation systems as a way to
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buffer that impedance. I wrote then:
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> This document deals only with explanation. Issues relating to inference
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> and especially to truth maintenance will undoubtedly be raised as it
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> progresses, but such hares will resolutely not be followed.
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In this I was wrong. The problem was not explanation; the problem was
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inference. The problem was, specifically, that human accounts of
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inference since Aristotle have been hegemonistic and self serving, so
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that when we started to try to automate inference we tried to automate
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not what we do but what we claim we do. We've succeeded. And having
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succeeded, we've looked at it and said, 'no, that is not intelligence'.
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It is not intelligence because it is not like us. It is clockwork,
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inhuman, precise. It does things, let us admit this covertly in dark
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corners, that we cannot do. But it does not do things we can do: it does
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not convince. It does not persuade. It does not explain.
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I shall do these things, and in doing them I shall provide an account of
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how these things are done in order that we can build machines that can
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do them. In doing this, I shall argue that truth does not matter; that
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it is a tool to be used, not an end to achieve. I shall argue that
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reason is profoundly unreasonable. The end to achieve, in argument as in
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so much other human behaviour, is not truth but dominance, dominance
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achieved by hegemony. In the end you will acknowledge that I am right;
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you will acknowledge it because I am right. I am right not because in
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some abstract sense what I say is true, but because you acknowledge it.
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