The following computer file that I was working on this morning regarding Artificial Intelligence is long, but eventually gets to the same point that you make:
AI info 040607
A couple of random thoughts regarding design considerations for sensible artificial intelligence applications:
In the movie Rainman, Dustin Hoffman plays a character named Raymond who is an “idiot savant”, i.e., capable of performing amazing mathematical feats, but incapable of making rational decisions. He is like a human computer – and an AI has to be able to make and act upon decisions, perhaps by slowing down and “fuzzing up” its ability to perform precise calculations rapidly as part of the trade-off. But there’s a lot more to making good decisions than this simplistic observation about a movie character.
My next thought regarding making good decisions contrasts milieu versus meme. Literally, milieu means “in the midst” – but this term is used figuratively to denote environment or setting – primarily in a cultural setting, or in other words, the middle-of-the road of the status quo of the culture. It is thus a framework indicating what’s accepted as normal or typical in a given culture. The word meme is so new that it’s not even in my fairly modern dictionary; i.e., the word meme itself is not yet accepted in general culture. The concept of meme originated in genetics and refers to how information is stored in and by genes. So, to compare and contrast the two, milieu represents the macrocosm of life (as in culture) and meme each bit of the microcosm of life. The meaning of meme has been expanded a bit, especially within the fields of psychiatry and AI. For example, from:
http://www.provide.net/~dougklim/Memedna.htm “A meme is an idea or a unit of thought. This essay is a (large) meme as is each sentence and each word. A word is not an actual meme, but the representation of a meme. A meme is not tangible in the same way computer software is not tangible, and memes can be thought of as software or programming or as instructions for action or thought. Humans transfer memes everyday by conversation, mass media, books, the Internet, and any other way an idea can be conveyed. By coming in contact with a meme, one’s thought process, and therefore oneself, is usually changed in some (usually slight) way. Ethologists use the term "fixed action pattern", which is a good definition of a meme when dealing with instinctive behavior. Some memetists have a more precise definition such as a meme must be transferred by imitation. [Susan Blackmore, "The Meme Machine"] For the specific purposes of this essay, I am using a broad concept of a meme. Although mine is not the normal use of the word, meme was coined by Richard Dawkins to correspond to gene, so the use of the word to represent thought stored in DNA seems quite appropriate.”
Thus all ordinary memes, even as their meanings change and grow, lie within the setting of current culture, but extraordinary ones push on social and cultural boundaries, some succeeding in enlarging them and some failing horribly, like some genetic mutations. Memes and their mutations are vital for cultural progress and societal evolution, but some attempts at progress, such as Communism, are doomed to failure because they conflict not only the milieu, but also go totally against the grain of the very underpinnings of the culture, i.e., ordinary human nature.
Memes that are malign cultural mutations obstruct and frustrate man’s search for happiness so harshly that eventually they are utterly rejected. Unfortunately, like cancer, a form of genetic mutation, malignant memes kill and sicken many cultures before being conquered. I’m not sure why we don’t just say “very bad idea” instead of “malignant meme” or “great idea” instead of “greatly beneficial meme”, but I think it has to do with the fact that a meme is an idea put into action. An idea has to be put into action before we can see its full result – including all unintended consequences. There are so many good-sounding ideas like Communism or Socialism that utterly fail in practice, but I feel that we could never have known that with certainty unless we had experienced it, or had carefully recorded and studied the terrible experiences of others. Conversely, now that we have several thousand years of recorded history, it is appropriate to reject some ideas out of hand before they can ever blossom into memes, lest we become addicted to the poisonous fruit thereof. Homosexual “marriage” comes to mind as a very malignant meme, but only because it is being trumpeted so much in the contemporary press and other media. Of course, history has already declared that it is a very bad idea, but some in authority have failed to learn this vital history lesson.