Trego's Mountain Ear

I read that they are at the edge of developing PhD level artificial intelligence.  It sounds like a great accomplishment – but I have met some folks who hold a Ph.D. who aren’t necessarily all that bright. 

My Ph.D. says that I can be trained.  It says that, with a bit of guidance and supervision I can perform original research and write up an acceptable report on that research.  It’s called a dissertation and some of them are downright lengthy.  In the old days they were shorter – but computers have made it easy to produce more pages.  If I remember correctly, Einstein’s dissertation was 20 pages.   Mine was 111 pages.  Alfred Kroeber’s was 28 pages, and the first dissertation in anthropology at Columbia.  More pages does not translate to better.  Like Kroeber and Einstein, my best research was completed after the dissertation.  Kroeber’s daughter (Ursula K Le Guin) wrote a lot more pages than he did – and if I recall correctly, he had over 500 publications.

It’s kind of like the term ‘masterpiece’ – originally, a masterpiece was the piece of work a journeyman did to show he was a master of his art.  It wasn’t the finest piece of work he ever did . . . as a master, he was expected to be able to regularly perform at that level.  Going back to Einstein – his dissertation was on a method of using Brownian motion to calculate Avogadro’s number, as I recall.  I suspect relativity was his finest work, but he might not have agreed.  Kroeber’s dissertation dealt with Arapaho ornamentation – and that is definitely not his greatest accomplishment.  

Basically, a Master’s thesis can show either original research, or, more frequently, can replicate research that has already been published.  Again, under guidance and supervision.   My most significant research was conducted as a Master’s thesis advisor.

I recollect a woman who explained “If you want to know about X, you should read my dissertation.”  She didn’t realize that the completed dissertation just formally recognizes the first step as a research scientist. 

As I think of the advantage Artificial Intelligence has over my bio-chemical brain, I think of the ability to input information.  I was blessed with the ability to read about 1200 words per minute.  With decent comprehension.  I’ve always suspected that the reason I got high scores on placement tests like the ACT, SAT and GRE was because I read faster – three or four times faster – than the average college graduate.  That gave me more time to answer the test questions, and return to the ones that needed more thought.  The Artificial Intelligence program may well just be able to input and process data faster – but it may be like the lady who thought her dissertation was the definitive work on personality disorders. 

 My Ph.D. says that I am trainable.  So is a Border Collie.  It looks like Artificial Intelligence programs are joining me and my dog.