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)

[edit] deletion proposal

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)

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)
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)
google search; Results ... about 5,710,000 for synthetic intelligence. (0.17 seconds)
including;
Darker Dreams 18:28, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
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)
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.

[edit] Reverted "Merge"

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)

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)
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)

[edit] Revived

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)

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)

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)