On Thu, 17 Feb 2005, JW Johnston wrote:
Bob Cowell's "At Random" column in this month's IEEE Computer magazine was about his renewed excitement in AI given Jeff Hawkins' book and work: http://www.computer.org/computer/homepage/0105/random/index.htm
Then today, found a similar article in Computer World: http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/story/0,10801,99691,00. html?source=NLT_PM&nid=99691. Talks about Hawkins' work as well as that of Robert Hecht-Nileson and Stan Franklin.
The AI winter ending?
I'm always glad to see public enthusiasm for Ai, Neuroscience, et al.
But unfortunately, the age-old problems of AI continue to haunt us.
The homonculus is alive and well, even after all these years, and warnings. Every time some amateur AI philosopher, such as this Jeff Hawkins, throws his hat into the ring, I'm reminded of this pernicious problem.
I haven't read the book, but from this fairly substantial review article, I get the sense that his model of the brain consists of a pattern matcher under the control of "intention".
There's the homonculous all over again. And Bob, the column author, loves it.
I guess I can't blame Bob, the homonculous has been so pernicious precisely because we tend to anthropomorphosize complex processes. But the author of the book, if accurately portrayed by this review, deserves a ruler across the fingers for falling into the swamp of the homonculus, despite plenty of posted warnings.
-Brad
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