A conversation with Sussman on AI and asynchronous programming
<i>"How am I talking to you right now?" Sussman asked. Sussman seemed to be talking about the shared symbolic values being held in the conversation, and at this point I started to understand. "Sure, when you're running the program, that whole thing is a black box. So is your brain. But you can explain to me the reasoning of why you did something. At that point, being able to inspect the symbolic reasoning of the system is all you have." And, Sussman explained, the propagator model carries its symbolic reasoning along with it.</i><p>I dunno. Are we talking about true "hard AI"? Because really, how much can Sussman or anyone introspect their own thought processes? We can tell ourselves stories about motivation and symbol manipulation, but those stories themselves are just more symbol manipulation. I'm not sure a sentient symbol-manipulator ever really "gets to the bottom" of true introspection of their own thought processes, including counterfactual thoughts they might have had.<p>This seems like an overly mechanistic approach, although perhaps workable in "soft AI"