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From: MAREK%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: minority report
Message-ID: <15684@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Jan-84 20:09:00 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.15684
Posted: Mon Jan 16 20:09:00 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Jan-84 06:13:58 EST
Lines: 23

ou won't take issue with
the hypothesis that an infant's category system is lesser than that of
an adult.  Yet, faced with the fact that many infants do become
adults, we have to explain how the category system can muster to grow
up, as well.

In order to do so, I propose to think that the human learning
is a process where, say, in order to assimilate a chunk of information
one has to have a hundred-, nay, a thousand-fold store of SIMILAR
chunks.  This is by direct analogy with physical growing up--it
happens very slowly, gradually, incrementally--and yet it happens.

If you recall, my original statement was made against attempting
"wholesale learning" as opposed to "knowledge-rich" systems when
building subcognitive sytems.  Admittedly, the complexity of a human
being is many an order of magnitude beyond that what AI will attempt
for decades to come, yet by observing the physical development of a
child we can arrive at some sobbering tips for how to successfully
build complex systems.  Abandoning the utopia of having complex
systems just "self-organize" and pop out of simple interactions of a
few even simplier pieces is one such tip.

                                -- Marek