From: uj...@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray)
Subject: Re: design a city oriented to
Date: 2000/04/21
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Thank you, Dr. McCarthy, for letting me be this footnote to AI history.
-Arthur T. Murray, menti...@scn.org, d.o.b. 13 July 1946 Dallas TX USA.

*John McCarthy, j...@Steam.Stanford.EDU, wrote on Good Friday 21 Apr 2000:

> 1. AI isn't close to human level (HL) yet.  I don't think we
> can really know what HL will be like till we get a lot closer.

> 2. You can't get people to seriously discuss policy until HL is    
> closer.  The present discussants, e.g. Bill Joy, are just chattering.

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html Vinge's
Technological Singularity scares me and remains my favorite AI text.

> 3. People are not distinguishing HL AI from programs with human-like
> motivational structures.  It would take a special effort, apart from
> the effort to reach HL intelligence to make AI
> systems wanting to rule the world or get angry with people or see
> themselves as oppressed.  We shouldn't do that.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/7256/mind4th.html Mind.Forth
is not the "special effort" that you would advise against.  Rather
it is the sincere effort of this B.A. in Latin and Greek to answer
religious questions on the nature of the brain-mind-soul by trying
to see how far we can go in AI before reaching a "Do Not Trespass".

> 4. Je ne regrette rien.

I thought I would regret my post if it backfired, but you are gracious.

> 5. To get so many four letter names you had to use some nicknames.

Yes, but everybody immediately assumed correctly that *John was you.

> --
> John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
> He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

--
Why do so many of the Greats of AI have four-letter names?
Alan, Andy, Bart, Bill, Dave, Doug, Drew, Hans, Harv, Jeff,
*John, Jorn, Kurt, Mark, Marv, Matt, Matz, Ment, Mike, Neil,
Nick, Nils, Noam, Paul, Pete, Phil, Push, Ross, Seth, Vern.