One of the major challengers of artificial intelligence willspeak in The Zone at the FedEx Institute of Technology at 1:30 p.m.Wednesday.
John Searle, Mills Professor of the Philosophy of Mind andLanguage at the University of California at Berkeley, will discussconsciousness, causation, reduction and the symbol groundingproblem -- tongue-twister concepts that confront whether a computercan ever understand what it is doing.
"It's kind of like having Bill Gates at your board meeting,"said Eric Matthews, assistant director of research and developmentat the FedEx Institute.
"The FIT is pulling in some big hitting speakers," Matthewssaid. "We want to expose people to things to which they normallywouldn't be exposed."
Representatives from Rhodes College, Christian BrothersUniversity and area corporations will attend. The event,co-sponsored by the Institute for Intelligent Systems, is also freeto the public, Matthews said.
Thanks to the Center for Media Arts, those who cannot attend incan join via Web cast at http://141.225.209.252/~cma/searle/.
The author of 13 books related to cognitive science, Searle isbest known for his Chinese Room thought experiment, whichchallenged the idea of a computer ever achieving true intelligenceand understanding.
The Chinese Room proposed that if a person were given Chinesecharacters with which to interpret Chinese writings in a room, thatperson could match characters to understand what was written on thewalls.
Anyone entering the room would not know that the person did notspeak Chinese, but the person looking at the cards really does notunderstand Chinese in the same way a person that speaks Chinesedoes.
Programs on computers are a set of rules the computer uses tomake decisions, but the computer does not really understand orquestion those rules the way a human could, according toSearle.
"The reason Searle's Chinese Room argument is such a big thingis that it's so understandable," said Lee McCauley, professor ofcomputer science at The U of M.
Searle was the top pick for the cognitive science seminar thissemester, McCauley said.
The seminar will look at responses to Searle's intellectualchallenge and the systems that claim to answer it.
The symbol grounding problem, the topic of Searle's visit, saysthat without grounding in experience, the manipulation of symbolsreally has no meaning.
"It's like trying to learn Chinese from a Chinese-Chinesedictionary," McCauley said. Even if a person or a computer cananswer questions and give the appearance of understanding, there isreally none there.
The culmination of the cognitive science seminar this semester,he said, was to set up criteria to prove if artificial intelligencecan really answer the Chinese Room challenge.
The FedEx Institute of Technology will continue to have big-namespeakers through the Center for Managing Emerging Technology VisionSpeaker series.
The 2004 series kicked off last week with David Kelly, founderand chairman of IDEO, an innovative design company. JeffreyWadsworth, lab director for Oak Ridge National Laboratory will comein April.
"The series was designed to have top level speakers ... lectureon topics that ideally show an intersection between research andtechnology," said LaShawn Parks, marketing and special eventsmanager for the FIT.
"We have been able to capitalize on the number of speakersbecause of the relationship Chariman/Executive Director JimPhillips has in the business community," she said.
While Searle is not a Vision Series speaker, the FedEx Instituteco-sponsored his visit as a way to bring speakers to The Universityand the community, Parks said.
