On 26 Dec 2002 at 10:32, Gary Miller wrote: > On Dec. 26 Alan Grimes said: > > >> According to my rule of thumb, > >> "If it has a natural language database it is wrong", > > Alan I can see based on the current generation of bot technology why one > would feel this way. > > I can also see people having the view that biological systems learn from > scratch so that AI systems should be able to also. > > Neither of these arguments are particularly persuasive though based on > what I've developed to date. > > Do you have other arguments against a NLP knowledge based approach that > you could share with me.
One basic problem is what's known as "symbol grounding". this means that an Ai system can't handle semantics, language-based cognition or even advanced syntax if it doesn't understand the relationships between its linguistic tokens and patterns in the nonlinguistic world. However, this problem doesn't totally rule out use of a linguistic DB. One could imagine supplying a system with a linguistic DB and having it learn groundings for the words and structures in the DB... Another problem is what I call the "knowledge richness" problem. The basic idea here is that if a system learns something through experience, it then is likely to know that something in an adaptable, adjustable way. Because it knows not only the thing itself, but a bunch of other things in the neighborhood of that thing, various useful components and superstructures of the thing, etc. it knows these other related things as side-effects of the learning process. On the other hand, if a system learns something through reading out of a DB, it doesn't have this surround of related things to draw on, so it will be far less able to adapt and build on that thing it's learned... My view is that a linguistic DB is not necessarily the kiss of death for an AGI system -- but I don't think you can build an AGI system that has a DB as its *primary source* of linguistic knowledge. If an AGI system uses a linguistic DB as one among many sources of linguistic information -- and the others are mostly experience-based -- then it may still work, and the linguistic DB may potentially accelerate aspects of its learning.. Ben G ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
