My view is that the problem here is a disconnect between the practical and the theoretical view points.
The practical view of computers is likely to commit pc-morphism, that is assume that any computer systems of the future are likely to be like current PCs in the way that they are programmed and act. This is not unreasonable if you haven’t been exposed to things like cellular automata and have a lot of evidence of computers being PC-like.
The theoretical view looks at the entire world as a computer (computable physics etc) and so has grander views of what is possible. People who go for the theoretical view of computation also tend to go for the theoretical view of agents and like Omohundro’s theory. I’m a little more sceptical of this and would rather keep the view at the computational level as the Omohundro-style view doesn’t tell us when things will make mistakes or malfunction. The abstraction tosses out too much information for my liking.
The computational view is currently lacking a good framework for discussing intelligence. If we had one we would certainly be closer to implementing it. Whether we will get one in the future is hard to predict,
My view is that the problem here is a disconnect between the practical and the theoretical view points.
The practical view of computers is likely to commit pc-morphism, that is assume that any computer systems of the future are likely to be like current PCs in the way that they are programmed and act. This is not unreasonable if you haven’t been exposed to things like cellular automata and have a lot of evidence of computers being PC-like.
The theoretical view looks at the entire world as a computer (computable physics etc) and so has grander views of what is possible. People who go for the theoretical view of computation also tend to go for the theoretical view of agents and like Omohundro’s theory. I’m a little more sceptical of this and would rather keep the view at the computational level as the Omohundro-style view doesn’t tell us when things will make mistakes or malfunction. The abstraction tosses out too much information for my liking.
The computational view is currently lacking a good framework for discussing intelligence. If we had one we would certainly be closer to implementing it. Whether we will get one in the future is hard to predict,