Talk:Synthetic intelligence

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Synthetic Intelligence is the engineering term; artificial intelligence is the scientific term. Both terms refer to the study and development of intelligent devices or mechanisms but with different objectives. Science has the main objective of analysis and so artificial intelligence work seeks to understand and duplicate naturally existing intelligence. Engineering has the main objective of synthesis to solve problems and so synthetic intelligence duplicates and develops aspects of intelligent behaviour as a means to solve problems, this may generate different systems with unique behaviour not found in naturally existing intelligence.

Does this mean that the terminology should change as we move between analysis and application? As for the ruby: the distinction between 'artificial' and 'synthetic' as applied to intelligence is purely philosophical since there is no categorical definition of 'intelligence'. Therefore these discussions belong with Strong AI.--moxon 10:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

deletion proposal[edit]

Synthetic Intelligence is the evolution of Artificial Intelligence. When machines gain the ability to ask questions, learn, and modify what they learn into new ideas, not to just follow a set of preprogrammed scenarios as with AI.--Ssmith2k 13:07, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If I may Synthetic intelligence seems to deal with the creation/manufacture of intelligence as opposed to artificial intelligence which may more accurately reflect the simulation of intelligence.--voss

Regardless of dismissing the term as a neologism, it is a term in use and thus diserves some manner of definition/discussion of the argument for its use. changing deletion request to suggestion for merge.Darker Dreams

I can't find any evidence of this term being used? Can you provide some? —Ruud 16:38, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I quit digging around that sort of thing when I left Computer Science for Pols/Law. I think I originally ran across it in science fiction. I don't recall how I ended up on this topic, however I rarely flip to random entries. However, I will present the fact that someone else started the article as evidence that this is not something I randomly generated. More importantly, simply because you (or I) cannot immediately point to a place it originates does not invalidate the argument that it is an existant term unless you are proposing that you can prove it is not. In short; the fact the article exists and has information is proof that there is such a term, which is not outwieghed by your lack of proof to substantiate it. If you could show evidence, even if that evidence is not sufficient to constitute conclusive proof, the term is soley a neologism with no other contextual, linguistic, or argumentative value then I'd put the deletion flag back myself. Meanwhile, this entry definitely needs citation, which would probably be why it already had a "needs cleanup" flag.Darker Dreams 18:19, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
google search; Results ... about 5,710,000 for synthetic intelligence. (0.17 seconds)
including;
Darker Dreams 18:28, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You need to be more careful when doing a Google search. I can find only 616 unique hits. ALso please read WP:V. Everything on Wikipedia needs to be verfiable, so absence of evidence can safely be taken as evidence of absence. —Ruud 22:05, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
if you're going to just throw policy at me, WP:AGF. I have shown that there is some notability WP:N, which seems to be what you actually meant with your neolgism tag. Whether or not it is sufficient notability is something I will leave to those more experienced with wikipedia than myself. Given that there has now been more discussion than your original delete prod allowed I'll suggest that if you still feel it should be deleted AfD it.

Reverted "Merge"[edit]

Given that nothing was added to the target page except that the term exists, including the reasons for the term, I can't help but feel that even with the massive number of warning/concern headers this article has it doesn't do more to explain the term/its use/etc than the article it was merged to. A more appropriate linkage would be to reference Computational intelligence, or Artificial intelligence, as a source for broader definition, information, and discussion of the importance and use of such programs. However, simply adding the clause "sometimes called Synthetic Intelligence" to an article does not constitute a merge of anything more than the title of the article. In short; if that merge is appropriate when I search for Synthetic Intelligence, simply being redirected to Computational intelligence would tell me something about the term for which the actual search was used. Darker Dreams 22:45, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That kind-of makes sense to me. I'd suggest a redirect to Artificial intelligence, which is usually considered to be the broad category that contains all approaches to the creation of non-natural intelligence. But whichever page the redirect goes to, I think a single sentence could be written that contains everything useful from here. Perhaps something like:
"Some researchers prefer the term synthetic intelligence, which avoids the possible misunderstanding of 'artificial' as 'not real'.[some reference to somebody talking about the terminology here]"
It needs work, but I think it would be an improvement over a rambling page like this, which isn't really useful to anyone. JulesH 22:52, 19 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
While I fully agree that the article is rambling and unhelpful I think that any attempt to condense it into a single sentence is a disservice or, at the least, probably more difficult than simply cleaning up a multi-sentence article or sub-section of another article...Darker Dreams 02:43, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Revived[edit]

I have revived this article as a discussion of the philosophical issue of simulation vs. reality. This goes along with moxon's suggestion at the top that this term is actually a volley in an ongoing philosophical battle. This also provided a nice place to centralize this issue, since there was not enough room in either the philosophy of artificial intelligence or chinese room articles. They can link here. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 04:54, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

While I believe that the simulation vs. reality issue is the motivation for the term "synthetic intelligence", I am also aware (from poking around the web) that there are a few people who believe that only subsymbolic AI can be called "synthetic", whereas symbolic AI should properly be called "artificial". This seems to be the same community that likes the term "synthetic AI", so one could make the argument that "synthetic AI" is actually another name for computational intelligence (or subsymbolic AI), rather than for artificial intelligence as a whole. Unfortunately, I need a reliable, that is central (not fringe) source that says this, and these have been hard to find. If you find one, let me know.

For now, I'm going with Poole, Mackworth & Goebel's definition of synthetic AI as a synonym for AI in general, since they are a reliable source. (See reference) ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 05:10, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I note that this section talks about 'thinking' and not 'intelligence'. While I am fine with the notion that Deep Blue was thinking very hard, IMO it wasn't very intelligent (no autonomous learning), as far as my definition of intelligence goes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Moxon (talk • contribs) 10:04, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Poor article. It's time to fix, merge or delete.[edit]

This article is pretty poor and there have been calls for improvement, merging or deletion for about 4 years now.

According to the article there are two uses of the term "synthetic intelligence":

(1) as a synonym for the field of artificial intelligence
(2) a complete departure from artificial intelligence which emphasizes the development of strong AI.

I'd like to make the following suggestion:

(1) should be merged into artificial intelligence and/or philosophy of artificial intelligence. The coverage of simulation vs reality would be much better in the latter article.
(2) there are no references for this, so as per WP:V and WP:RS this should go.

Any objections? pgr94 (talk) 11:21, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I object. The article was "merged" once, leaving no indication of the actual subject matter to be found- only the term which is not useful. Looking at the talk several pieces of this article have already been removed from other pages where there wasn't "space" for them to fit nicely, but which the editors thought could be covered better here. Meanwhile, that seperation seems like it has little distinction, and less of one in the information I find about the term. Accordingly, I've made some edits. Darker Dreams (talk) 14:46, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The new references are either not reliable sources or talk about other subjects e.g. cognitive architectures, Dietrich Dörner's Psi-Theory. To me, this article is just a neologism and as yet no reliable sources indicate otherwise. Any better sources? pgr94 (talk) 14:57, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, I'm playing with this between talking to people and using proddings at google as my only real window into the discussion so I'm doubtful at how good of sources I'll be able to pull up. Maybe what we're seeing is a seperation between "respectable"/"what can we accomplish with lots of computing" AI and "I still want to make a computer that works like a human brain" SI. Maybe we're just seeing a new term (yes, neologism) trying to eek its way out of the enormous shadow of the term AI. But, really, it's not my field so I'm just guessing. If it is a neologism, it's one that people within the field have apparently been agitating over for at least two decades and has gotten enough notoriety to get used and recognized outside the field on occasion. Finally, I do see a lot of AI/SI language (ie; "drop the argument in a bin and punt so I can talk about what I really want to") or other acknowledgement of the term in my searches. Just nothing useful enough in distinguishing it to add to this article. Darker Dreams (talk) 15:55, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The term has at least one solid source: John Haugeland's Artificial Intelligence: the Very Idea is one of the most important sources for the philosophy of AI. In the first footnote (which appears on p. 255) he writes:

Perhaps Artificial Intelligence should be called "Synthetic Intelligence" to accord better with commercial parlance. Thus artificial diamonds are fake imiitations, whereas synthetic diamonds are genuine diamonds."

I didn't check the others, but I'm pretty sure that Russell and Norvig also contains a sentence or two like this. The other quotes (from Searle, Dennett, etc.) are definitely on the same subject. So:

  1. This section of the article has very solid sources
  2. The term "synthetic intelligence" is not a neologism as it is used in this section

I agree that the topic of "simulation and reality" should be added to philosophy of AI at some point. I'm just not sure where, exactly; that article has a very clear structure that I don't want to mess up. The same is true of Chinese room.

I think this is more or less what pgr94 is saying. Your objection is to the section on the newer use of the term, right? (as a synonym for "strong AI" or "artificial general intelligence" or "sub-symbolic AI" or "computational intelligence"). I don't know anything about this. Could someone else check these sources? ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 16:23, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes pretty much. The newer use has no reliable sources. The use of "synthetic intelligence" as a synonym for "artificial intelligence" never caught on, even if it is more accurate, so does it really warrant a separate article? The Simulation vs Reality section is definitely worth keeping. So it comes down to finding the right place for it in Philosophy of AI. Perhaps that material could be better discussed on the Philosophy of AI talk page? pgr94 (talk) 16:58, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I just checked the new sources:
  • This [1] uses the term according to Haugeland's definition. It even mentions Haugeland! So this source is redundant with respect to the main source Haugeland (1985). It is also very weak; it's some lecture notes.
  • There is nothing to indicate that this company [2] is using the term differently than Haugeland's definition.
  • The pages where this book Synthetic Intelligence defines the term are not available at Google books, or at least I couldn't find them. So we don't know how this book is using the term.
So these sources are still not quite what we need to keep the second definition of the term. What about the company mentioned in the article? Have they published anything? ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 17:24, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not seeing anything related to the companies discussed in that second section. I'm also not seeing anything related to "complete departures," though things like this and this suggest the "strong AI"/AGI part of the definition may be valid. I can't access it, but this looked like it might relate. Darker Dreams (talk) 16:25, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Try http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.38.8384&rep=rep1&type=pdf pgr94 (talk) 17:09, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The last source (from Diane Law) clearly uses the same definition as Haugeland, so nothing new there (she uses the example of ruby, rather than a diamond). Note that we already have this citation in the article.
The other two sources appear to cover the same material; they are a lecture and a paper from Joscha Bach about the "Seven Principles of Synthetic Intelligence". I read the first few pages of the paper, and, as near as I can tell, Bach is using the same definition. Just as with Haugeland, synthetic intelligence means "real" intelligence in machines. The difference is that Bach is being very specific about what he thinks "real" intelligence consists of. (Such things as a functionalist architecture, general intelligence, autonomy, etc., his "seven principles").
I think that the Bach source is probably typical of any other source. I think all the sources will use "synthetic intelligence" to mean "real" intelligence in a machine. Some sources will argue that intelligence is only "real" if it has some X, where X might be (1) a simulation the functions of parts of the mind, such as consciousness, awareness or perception (Artificial consciousness) (2) uses sub-symbolic reasoning (Computational intelligence) (3) is versatile enough to execute any intelligent behavior (Artificial general intelligence) (4) simulates the neural correlates of consciousness (Artificial brain). Other sources will argue that intelligence is defined only by behavior, and so all machine intelligence is "real" (Artificial intelligence). And finally a few sources, like Dennett or Russell/Norvig will argue that distinction between "real" and "artificial" has no useful meaning. The point is this: while they may vary widely on what they consider "real" intelligence, they are using the term as Haugeland defined it.
I think this framework could help us to produce a discussion of these sources. The article should not tie "synthetic intelligence" down to a particular approach; we must try to find a neutral point of view. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 00:49, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's a pretty reasonable approach. I'm just not sure where to go with it. Darker Dreams (talk) 11:28, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Trying to find things to help move forward I'm running across two interesting features that should probably also get some air time. First, as much as this term's use has been shown among AI researchers, it seems more common among science fiction. I have no "reliable" sources for this yet, simply an observation that it pops up in lots of discussion of AI in SciFi. While it is, as discussed factually, generally taken as an alternate term for AI a subcategory of this is the transhumanist synthisis of human and machine. The other use is that it seems to be getting around is "creative/synthetic intelligence. I've seen references to all these uses, but I'm not sure how good they are. Darker Dreams (talk) 15:06, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm much happier with the article now. Well done Charles and DD. As already mentioned above, I think what is still missing is better integration with closely related articles:

pgr94 (talk) 15:49, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Other Uses[edit]

Posted a version of this in the conversation above, but this really is it's own issue. Ergo, it's own section. Trying to find things to help move forward I'm running across two alternate uses that should probably also get some air time, even if it's just a link for one of them. First, as much as this term's use has been shown among AI researchers, it seems more common among science fiction. I have no "reliable" sources for this yet, simply an observation that it pops up in lots of discussion of AI in SciFi. While it is, as discussed factually, generally taken as an alternate term for AI a subcategory of this is the transhumanist synthisis of human and machine. The other use is that it seems to be getting around is "creative/synthetic intelligence. I've seen references to all these uses, but I'm not sure how good they are. Darker Dreams (talk) 14:57, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Michael C[edit]

I have deleted the following from the "Definition" section.

Michael C suggests that AI, is human guided to a specific desired outcome, while SI is free to develop its own "decisions" based on the environment in which it is trained. (1993)

Who is "Michael C," and why should we care about what he says? If you can figure out what source the quoted material tried to cite, then by all means, please add it along with the deleted sentence, but for now I think this should go.—GreenWeasel11 (talk) 00:11, 26 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Text was added in edit] labeled; "Alternate proposal of differentiation based on CRC - Comprehension, Rationalisation and Conclusion". There was a page for Michael C which has been deleted. Darker Dreams (talk) 23:17, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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