I had my doubts about the article at first. I am a long time critic of "AI." But so I don't appear uninformed, let me start with the fact I took a college extension course in "AI" in 1983. I personally knew the professor from a previous job application. At the time, AI was mostly conceived of as Rule Based Systems, and we built some of those. Later, in 1986 I was an officer of the Association for Computing Machinery local chapter (in San Diego) when they presented an engaging seminar on Neural Networks, which have monopolized mind share about AI ever since. I believe that is fundamentally wrong. Until you can explain your thoughts, you don't actually have "Intelligence." What you have is something like "Gut Feeling" or "Instinct." I won't believe what any computer AI does until it can explain itself to me. And you are going to need "rules" for that (ordinary computer programs are built with rules, usually called algorithms and programs) not just neural networks. I imagine the best AI will combine the approaches, and perhaps others we haven't thought of yet, but rules really have to have the upper hand, or what we have are Artificial Despots, which is what we might have anyway, as the author describes in his way.
But hopium and hyperbole have propelled Artificial Gut Feeling as the present solution to all our problems, which it is not. It's just another bump in the road we're taking over the cliff. At best.
No comments:
Post a Comment