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That Great Random Number Generator in the Sky applied to language
[line] After a bout of intense work that consumed the Christmas season, I decided to take a busman's holiday and have some fun with my computer. The inspiration was The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed, a book that Geri Younggren showed me at Apple
This use of randomness is cognate, on the machine level, with its use by life itself.
Note that this arrangement is automatically recursive, since among the NOUN matrices might be "ADJ NOUN," a classifier that tells it to insert an adjective and go find another noun. There are other features in PROSEWRITER that provide hierarchies of classification, label certain classifiers to provide continuity of subject matter, and simplify classification by providing functions such as automatic pluralization. But the basic idea, which I hereby label the "Towner machine," is that of an internally referential data base operated on by a Turing machine. With such a machine, the quest for artificial intelligence (now defined as intelligent prose output) no longer involves what is usually called "programming." The Pascal part is done; the Turing machine is defined. But as you refine the matrices and their classifications, the output becomes more and more human-sounding. Thus arises a new kind of programming, which I call "memory programming" (as opposed to "instruction programming"). It inverts what we think of as normal program structure. Where the depth of instruction programming lies in its ability to select actions based on the content of data ("branching," in computer terms), the depth of memory programming lies in its ability to select data based on the actions to be performed with it ("classification"). In my work with the PROSEWRITER data base so far, I am doing memory programming by hand, using Roget as a guide. But doing it by machine is not far off. The role of randomness is now both crucial and constructive. In PROSEWRITER, the random number generator mediates between the instruction program and the memory program. It is the means by which the instruction program's request to access memory is linked to a particular element of the memory program. However, it does not introduce new data into either structure. Neither program is "aware" of the fact that they are linked randomly. This use of randomness is cognate, on the machine level, with its use by life itself. There are three major areas where life could not operate without random functions: evolution, learning, and human consciousness. In the case of evolution, random mutation is the engine that drives adaption and speciation. With learning, randomness supplies the "trial" part of trial-and-error. In the case of human consciousness, it supports imagination. In all three instances, random functions mediate between a dynamic process (survival of the fittest, trial-and-error, problem-solving) and a changing data base (the gene pool, learned behavior, individual experience). Thus I envision the "key" to artificial intelligence residing in the interaction between two (or more) programs of fundamentally different natures. Their random intercommunications give them the freedom to achieve unpredictable (and hence possibly novel, creative) results. The fact that life itself also operates this way is a good omen. There is a lot more to the interrelations between intelligence and other living processes than this article can cover. For my ideas on the subject, read my book The Architecture of Knowledge (University Press of America, 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, MD 20706; $10). In the interstices of earning a living, I hope to pursue the concept of memory programming with a view to improving the quality of PROSEWRITER's output. At the same time, I hope to learn more about this new kind of software. Perhaps Editor Amyx will accept, from time to time, examples of PROSEWRITER's outpourings for publication in The Ecphorizer. Don't expect too much too soon. After all, it is only a poor, struggling program trying to break into the mainframes. When its compositions become indistinguishable from human prose, I will start selling them under my own name and retire.
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