Return-Path: From: pgs@ai.mit.edu (Patrick Sobalvarro) Date: Thu, 13 May 93 14:19:30 EDT To: all-ai Subject: GSB Friday, May 14, 7th Floor Playroom SECTION 3.5: Vehicle Number 259 We are now in a position to build our two-hundred-and-fifty-ninth vehicle, which can be seen in Plate CCLIX. In this vehicle we adapt some of our earlier excitor-circuits, such as those that caused motion in the direction of food and drink, and add to them new excitor-circuits, causing motion away from increased scholastic endeavour. Here we have a multi-sensorial vehicle with truly interesting behaviour. This vehicle will attend seminars for the first few minutes, taking as many cookies and drinks as it can, but will leave should the subject matter become abstruse. The point at which it leaves will depend on the amount of food and drink remaining, the difficulty of the material being presented, and the attenuations or gains associated with the weights of the individual sensors. We will find that our vehicle displays a particular undesirable behaviour at seminars; e.g. it may linger in a position some distance removed from both the speaker and the food and drink, vibrating in an oscillatory mode peculiar to its internal control loop: mesmerised, transfixed! -- between gratification and revulsion. It will be clear that this bit of embarassing behaviour may be obviated by insertion of an appropriate combination of hysteretic and damping elements in the sensorium. One such combination may be seen in Plate CCLX. Would any sensible person doubt that we have in fact constructed a graduate student? Our Vehicle Number 259 is perhaps a crude example of the type, but all the base behaviours are captured and with appropriate refinements -- e.g. we may wish to affix a rucksack -- even the most obstinate jack-ass of a Berkeley philosophy professor will be forced to admit that we have in fact created intelligence here! -- or something related to it. A variety of examples may be viewed at this week's G I R L S C O U T B E N E F I T to be held on Friday, May 14, at 5:30 p.m., in the seventh floor playroom. It is requested that attendees conduct in low voices any conversation with technical content, so as not to drive off the examples.