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From: wcalvin@well.UUCP (William Calvin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Goal of AI: where are we going?
Message-ID: <4133@well.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 4-Oct-87 16:19:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: well.4133
Posted: Sun Oct  4 16:19:03 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 7-Oct-87 07:08:39 EDT
References: <178@usl> <46400008@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <272@uwslh.UUCP>
Reply-To: wcalvin@well.UUCP (William Calvin)
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 14
Keywords: Neurobiology, evolutionary biology, Minsky, Braitenberg
Summary: Re-inventing the wheel vs. Using neurobiology to help


Making AI a real science suffers from the attitude of many of its founders:
they'd rather re-invent the wheel than "cheat" by looking at brain research.
While Minsky's SOCIETY OF MIND is very interesting, one gets the impression
that he hasn't looked at neurophysiology since the 1950s.  Contrast that to
Braitenberg's little book VEHICLES (MIT Press 1984), which summarizes a lot
of ideas kicking around neurobiology at the simple circuit level.
	The other thing strikingly missing, besides a working knowledge of
neurobiology beyond the Hubel-Wiesel level, is a knowledge of evolutionary
biology beyond the "survival of the fittest" level.  Emergent properties are
a big aspect of complex systems, but one seldom hears much talk about them
in AI.
William H. Calvin
University of Washington NJ-15, Seattle WA 98195