🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <875446625snz@longley.demon.co.uk>,
David@longley.demon.co.uk (David Longley) wrote:

>[...]
>Elsewhere I have asked (rhetorically) whether it really is AI  to 
>build and implement models of classical conditioning as  Rescorla 
>and  Wagner did the late 60s and early 70s (and which Sutton  and 
>Barto  contributed to later in the 80s). There is, in my  view  a 
>considerable  difference  between AI (which may cash  out  to  be 
>science  and technology in general) and  experimental  psychology 
>and the neurobiology of learning. Those interested should look at 
>Fragjn97.pdf at the www below.

  It seems that current research in AI is mostly involved with finding
new and clever programming methods to do fancy things.  In this light
I agree that AI has little to do with natural intelligence.  It is for
this reason that the relatively new field of computational
neuroscience was born, as a way for a group of researchers to distance
themselves from formal logic, knowledge representation, symbol
manipulation, frames, scripts, etc., and even ANNs.  However, the
original goal of AI (to create a synthetic intelligence whose behavior
and learning prowess would be commensurate with that of humans) is
still alive and kicking, IMO.  That AI research went astray right from
the start is no reason to abandon the early spirit.  If anything, I
think most of the current work in AI should be renamed to "complex
logical solutions" or something similar, so as to retain the name AI
for the work in computational neuroscience.  But then again, it may
not matter all that much.
  As an aside, my own limited understanding of this subject leads me
to conclude that intelligence, even though highly distributed within
constrained areas, is indeed fragmented.  I see a family of
cooperating subnetworks or agents, if you will, that nevertheless
remain ignorant of each other's operation in significant ways.  Even
within the individual agents themselves, I see a large degree of
fragmentation which would become apparent were there to be a local
malfunction of some sort.  This, I understand to be your own view of
human intelligence.
  Furthermore I see it as a waste of time to entertain the notion that
so-called cognitive mechanisms can be formalized to any significant or
useful degree.  This would be true even if we had a fully operational
and advanced AI to tinker with.  The dynamic and complex nature of an
interconnected intelligence is simply too daunting.  We will only be
able to identify various areas as to their functions, by selectively
disabling them and observe changes in the machine's behavior.  Even
then, a good many subtle phenomena would escape our notice.  Trying to
create an intelligence entirely from the top down, i.e., by
formalizing human cognition or psychology is pure folly, IMO.

Regards,

Louis Savain,

President, Marengo Media, Inc.