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sn#001246 filedate 1972-09-18 generic text, type T, neo UTF8
00100 TOYS, TOOLS AND WEAPONS.
00150 A Taxonomy of Artifacts
00200
00300 Baumgart
00400
00500
00600 In artificial intelligence, the robot's tool problem is how
00700 to program a robot so that it can use tools to solve its problems in
00800 the world. Well now, what is a "tool", and for that matter what is a
00900 "robot", what is a "program", what is a "problem" and what is the
01000 "world"; and what does the phrase "using a tool" mean, does it
01100 require the ability to discover a tool or to build a tool ? ...aren't
01200 robots tools, when is a man a tool, and will that dumb monkey use
01300 that stick to hit that travel agent so that he will tell him how to
01400 get to Timbuktu in order to get those bananas.
01500
01600 One might say that an AI programmer will have to have a tool
01700 philosophy in order to program a robot; however unlike a philosopher
01800 (or even a mathematician) a programmer's philosophy need not be
01900 correct and need not cover all the special cases; the essential thing
02000 is to be able to partition a realm into a block diagram and then to
02100 code simple version of the blocks, then to try the system; and then
02200 to start over or sell it or take over the world.
02300
02400 The universe of our discourse consists of two worlds; there
02500 is an Abstract World and there is a Physical World. First consider
02600 the Physical World; the physical world consists of all matter and
02700 energy; portions of the physical world can be grouped together as an
02800 "object"; now an object may or may not have intellect; where our
02900 working definition of intellect is the computer analogy definition of
03000 intellect - an intellectual entity consists a processor, a memeory,
03100 and input-output, but that's all covered in memo x.
03110
03200
03300 Non-intellectual entities can be mostly partitioned into
03400 "Natural Objects" and "Artifact Objects". Now the `Toys, Tools and
03500 Weapons' partition is to divide the set of Artifact Objects into
03600 those things that an intellectual entity uses to change the state of
03700 the natural physical world, TOOLS; and those things that an
03800 intellectual entity uses to change the state of his internal abstract
03900 world, TOYS; and those things that an intellectual entity uses to
04000 change the internal abstract world of other intellectual entities,
04100 WEAPONS.