Re: computer-go: Pattern matching

[Patricia Hughes and David Elsdon <babel17@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Elmer Elevator wrote:

> But here's a good example of machine-resistant Knowledge. Reporters on daily
> newspapers often have to find someone very quickly -- say, within four hours
> before deadline. The person is not very clearly identified like "Jane Smith,"
> but rather something like "the ex-wife" or "one of the ex-wives" (but not just
> any of the ex-wives -- the one who had his red-headed son) of Richard Jones. Or
> "someone who rides a motorcycle who worked in a real estate office with Laurie
> Johnson in 1997." Or "a past assault victim of a man who was just arrested for
> another assault." Or "There's a guy in this county who's been struck by
> lightning three times" (but you can't find an old article about him in the
> newspaper morgue; the dumb librarian probably filed the old articles under his
> name rather than under "lightning").
>
> I won't make the computer actually get into a car and drive around the city;
> we'll restrict the hunt to the office and telephone (a very realistic frequent
> restriction).
>
> It's certainly quantifiable and verifiable because either you find this person
> in time to interview him/her for your story (win) or you don't (lose). And to be
> fair, we won't base it on just one competitive deadline search, but rather on a
> year's worth of deadline searches. Like backgammon, there's an element of luck,
> so no expert wins every time (but backgammon is a solved computer knowledge
> problem).
>
> All I can tell you about this kind of knowledge is that you get better at it
> year after year, that it's a skill reporters get very good at and take great
> pride in. (Police cheat -- they can use intimidation and threaten to arrest
> people to get answers.) Maybe we're arrogant, but if you posted this question to
> a bunch of reporters and claimed a computer could learn to do it as well (same
> percentage of success) as a seasoned reporter, you'd get laughed at very
> vigorously.
>
> Bob Merkin
>
> > Patricia Hughes and David Elsdon wrote:
> > >
> > > Give me an example of knowledge that cannot be represented on a > machine.
> >
> > In a course on expert-systems I was told, and I now believe it,
> > that "common sence" is very very very very very very hard to represent
> > and maybe even impossible.
> > But that is because you don't know what you know so maybe I am
> > cheating when I use common sence as an example.

Bob's example of machine-resistant Knowledge reminds me very much of "Rare Skills
Archiving". There are some people within organisations who build up a body of
knowledge and become the expert on something or other. When they announce their
imminent  retirement, or leaving for pastures new, the company suddenly realises how
important their knowledge is and goes about recording their knowledge, often  in the
form of an expert system. When it needs to be done it can be done. There is no
inherent difference between the human brain and a computer system which prevents
knowledge that it stored in a human brain from being emulated by a computer.

Cheers

David