On Monday 11 June 2007 02:06:35 pm Joshua Fox wrote: ... > Could I ask also that you take a stab at a psychological/sociological > question: Why have not the leading minds of AI (considering for this > purpose only the true creative thinkers with status in the community, > however small a fraction that may be) taken a sufficiently multi-layered, > grounded approach up to now? Isn't the need for grounding and deep-layering > obvious to the most open-minded and intelligent of researchers?
Well, for one thing, the depth of the problem wasn't understood, and it a large extent one of the major contributions of the 50-year history of AI is to plumb it and give us a perspective. Today, AI along with cogsci and neuroscience, has given us a much better handle, I would venture to claim, on the scope of the problem. Second, it's not clear that the Newell & Simon types won't ultimately be right. Our bodies are built around a flexible backbone, though no sane engineer would design an upright biped that way. We're built that way because we evolved from fish. There are probably plenty of "backbones" in the mind, which we can find more efficient replacements for once we've figured out how the whole business really works. But there will have to be a decade or two of experience with *working* AGI before it gets optimized to that point. Third, it's not clear that the top minds don't understand the problem perfectly well, but they have to work with what they've got, to advance the field to the point where they have something better. One could very reasonably characterize the last couple of decades' disregard of the goal of the integrated AI and instead the thrust of AI into COLT and modal logic and so forth as an attempt to build up the infrastructure -- and in fact it has been a very productive period, as far as the kinds of algorithms that are now available to build an AGI on are concerned. 1960s -- feet of clay 1970s -- legs of iron 1980s -- loins of bronze 1990s -- breast of brass 2000s -- head of silver Are we ready for the crown of gold yet? I like to think we're getting close :-) Josh ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=e9e40a7e
