Creating Artificial Intelligence Based on the Real Thing

[groovedaddy]

Ever since the early days of modern computing in the 1940s, the biological metaphor has been irresistible. The first computers — room-size behemoths — were referred to as “giant brains” or “electronic brains,” in headlines and everyday speech. As computers improved and became capable of some tasks familiar to humans, like playing chess, the term used was “artificial intelligence.” DNA, it is said, is the original software.

For the most part, the biological metaphor has long been just that — a simplifying analogy rather than a blueprint for how to do computing. Engineering, not biology, guided the pursuit of artificial intelligence. As Frederick Jelinek, a pioneer in speech recognition, put it, “airplanes don’t flap their wings.”

Yet the principles of biology are gaining ground as a tool in computing. The shift in thinking results from advances in neuroscience and computer science, and from the prod of necessity.

The physical limits of conventional computer designs are within sight — not today or tomorrow, but soon enough. Nanoscale circuits cannot shrink much further. Today’s chips are power hogs, running hot, which curbs how much of a chip’s circuitry can be used. These limits loom as demand is accelerating for computing capacity to make sense of a surge of new digital data from sensors, online commerce, social networks, video streams and corporate and government databases.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/creating-artificial-intelligence-based-on-the-real-thing.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210

[Speck Tater]

1. I've been a computer engineer since 1963 and for all that time,..

real artificial intelligence has always been "ten years in the future".

I've heard the same story four times a year for the last 50 years: "This time we're really on to something. This time, human-class AI really is only ten years in the future."

Permit me to remain skeptical.

[saras]

2. AI is actually DEFINED as ten years in the future.

When we can actually do something (chess, visual recognition, captchas, expert systems) they're defined as "not AI".

AI seems to be used as the term for "research into intelligence" and not "functioning systems that do things we though required intelligence).

On the other hand, biological AI doesn't have to be smart enough to impress humans, just smart enough to thrive, like microorganisms or invasive pests. The bar is much lower.

[hunter]

3. I don't think we'll ever find what we are seeking.

Human beings are themselves "functioning systems that do things we thought required intelligence."

The behavior of our machines will become increasingly complex and more "intelligent" as we create more tools for processing various sorts of information and patch these tools together in novel ways.

The process will be very similar to the evolution of natural intelligence. The most useful information processing tools will be reproduced, adapted to other uses, and combined with other processing tools. The less useful tools will be discarded.

There will never be a precise boundary between non-intelligence and intelligence, and the failures of machine intelligence will be just as goofy and random and sometimes as tragic as failures of animal intelligence.