Marvin Minsky On AI

An anonymous reader writes "In a three-part Dr. Dobbs podcast, AI pioneer and MIT professor Marvin Minsky examines the failures of AI research and lays out directions for future developments in the field. In part 1, 'It's 2001. Where's HAL?' he looks at the unfulfilled promises of artificial intelligence. In part 2 and in part 3 he offers hope that real progress is in the offing. With this talk from Minsky, Congressional testimony on the digital future from Tim Berners-Lee, life-extension evangelization from Ray Kurzweil, and Stephen Hawking planning to go into space, it seems like we may be on the verge of another AI or future-science bubble."

Comments

AI Should Focus on Pattern Matching, Not Logic

[curmudgeon99]

AI Pioneers Mistakenly Focus on Simulating Left-Brain Thinking

Eighty-eight percent of the brains--those belonging to right-handed people--process information with a linear-sequential style. Those of us in the programming world could describe this as a single-threaded model. One process must run its course before the next can commence. This seems so obviously the way to proceed merely because 88 percent of the population--the right-handers--approach the world through this paradigm.

Alternative Is Right-Brain Thinking

As researchers such as Roger Sperry discovered during experiments done in the 1960s and 1970s, there is an alternative. Right-brain thinking processes information using what is called a Visual-Simultaneous model. In this style, pattern matching becomes the dominant processing style. I would be tempted to equate this to multi-threaded processing but in fact it is much more.

Right-handed thinkers process information--as I said--using the Linear-Sequential processing style, also known as analysis

Left-handed thinkers process information using the Visual-Simultaneous processing style, also known as synthesis.

It is my contention that AI researchers will find the best results in their endeavors if they seek to focus not an the analysis/linear-sequential mode of thought but, rather, on the synthesis/visual-simultaneous mode. The greatest benefit came to homo sapiens when we were able to grow beyond the process of deduction (from the particular to the general) to induction (from the general to the particular). Achieving the latter end is much easier to achieve when induction is practiced.

For further reference to this I send you to: Left-handeness, effect in humans on thinking

Slashdotted?

[M0b1u5]

Slashdotted? That site is the slowest lump of shit I've seen in months. (No comments about the fast lumps of shit I've seen please; none of them were aimed at ME!) Any self-respecting web server would just post an error, or at least simply fail to load the page. But 12 minutes has elapsed, and the pages are STILL loading at what I think is 14 BAUD.

The interesting part is that the whole page loads - except for the article content itself. I didn't know it was possible to force adverts ahead of text content. Weird.