Artificial Intelligence Events
DCS Seminar by Prof Wegner (Brown University)
Interaction more powerful than algorithms
We provide an empirical analysis of questions like 'can machines think', and 'why interaction is more powerful than algorithms'. We discuss 'persistent Turing machines' as a model of sequential interaction that formally proves the greater power of interaction over algorithms and Turing machines. We explain that the 'Strong Church-Turing thesis', formulated by theorists in the 1960's, violates Turing's original thesis about unsolvability of the decision problem and is a myth, in the sense that it departs from the principles of Turing's unsolvability result in his 1936 paper.
[The above is extracted from Wegner's summary of his 'Principles of Interactive Computation'; this is a handout available now in the Common Room. Please collect a copy of the full chapter if you are interested,]