I’m currently reading a book called “Microcognition” by British philosopher Andy Clark. It’s basically about human efforts to model human intelligence using computers. Until a few years ago, the popular term for this effort was “artificial intelligence”. But today, that term isn’t very popular. Our scientists have made a lot of progress in understanding just what it is about our brains that makes humankind intelligent (well, at least in certain situations . . . . ). And in doing so, strangely enough, the stuff of our own brains has taught us a new way to compute. Through the 1950s and 60s and into the 1970s, our scientists attacked the problem of intelligence using standard computer programming, the classic realm of do-loops and if-then logic based on combinations of AND – OR gates (in the tradition of mathematical logician John Von Newman). They came up with some wonderful inventions, like those powerful chess-playing computers that no human can beat.
But those super computers couldn’t and still can’t do what people really do in life, i.e. figure out how to survive in confusing and changing circumstances and learn from their experiences and mistakes. The “AI” programmers couldn’t figure out how to make a computer form an “abstraction”, e.g. how to derive the common-ground concept of ‘cold’ from varied examples such as ice, Arctic fronts, and refrigeration. Over time, they finally considered the actual structure of the brain and noticed that it really wasn’t set up like a digital computer. Instead it was like a spider web of intricately connected little things, i.e. neurons, each of which are relatively dumb in themselves. What we slowly learned from the brain was that if such webs of relatively simple information processing objects were set up in the right way (through trial and error, the general process of nature), then abstract ideas and creative re-combinations of them could “emerge”, almost as if by magic. I.e., we found a way to mimic abstraction and creativity.
Today, “parallel processing” and “neural nets” and object-oriented programming are hot items in computer science; they are allowing all kinds of advances such as voice recognition that really works. We haven’t yet been able to do what our brains do in terms of flexible thinking, but our machines are certainly getting better. Once we decided to put aside the “old fashioned artificial intelligence” approach based on man-made rules, and started listening to “mother nature”, computer science progressed by leaps and bounds.
The brain still hasn’t yielded all of its secrets, and I hope it will be a while yet before humankind figures them out. But it is certainly humbling to see another example of how we ain’t so smart after all; and that whatever smartness we do have is not our own invention, but was a gift from nature. Hopefully we will learn to use that gift wisely enough as not to continue punishing and exploiting the source of that gift, in the quest for wealth and independence. Nature is still smarter that we are, and if we keep pushing her past her limits, she may well find the need — and the means — to shut us down. And all the parallel-distributed silicon chips in the world won’t be able to stop that.
Jim,
I realize this is not quite what you are talking about, but I just finished reading THE FEMALE BRAIN by Louann Brizendine. I’ll skip some of the criticisms I have of the book, one of which is that is it waaaaay tooo simplified, and skip directly to a general impression I had when I finished reading this book.
I found that it started to bore me–and not for the reasons a book would normally bore me. I was bored because the farther I got in reading this book, the more everything was reduced to a “brain.” And while this book was devoted to explaining the “female” brain, the “male” brain got itself included also in the material.
The more I read, the more the greatest to the simplest emotion was reduced simply to “brain workings.” The more I read, the more what sometimes may be thought of as the “mysteries” of life were reduced to the workings of the brain.
At first, I thought, well, perhaps I may not agree with all of this material; but why not hear out (read out) the entirety of the thought about this topic? What can hurt? I might even learn something. But then the farther on I went, the more truly bored I became.
I found myself having the same feeling as I had when I told the doctor that it “took a while before my husband actually seemed dead,” when he died at home with my holding his hand. The doctor’s answer was: “Well, it takes some time for the heart to totally stop beating.” My reaction then was that the man had no clue: Regardless of how long a heart may take to stop beating and make the person “seem” to be actually dead–I KNEW that there was more to it. I actually had FELT the presence of my husband in the room near me, realized that that presence no longer was in his body, and knew without doubt that whatever one wanted to call it, his “spirit” (or whatever name one wants to apply here) was actually present for a period of time after he died. I felt it when he left.
So, as unscientific as it may be, I wonder whether AI–or whatever name they wish to call computerized intelligence now–will ever have “spirit” inhabiting it. OR….. will AI have it’s own, different kind of “spirit” eventually inhabiting it?
And I do not wish to even HEAR how I was projecting the presence of my husband, blah, blah, blah. The simple fact of the matter is that one is aware of the “presence” of a person when the person is near; when the person is not near, the “presence” is gone. This phenomenon occurs when one is alive–and I add–dead.
So, while all the “parallel processing” and “neural nets” may produce some kind of intelligence, I cannot help but consider that it will be different in kind from that of humans.
And then on another tangent (I realize all the above is tangential to your main tho’t in this blog), I cannot help but wonder about the “thin thread” of electricity on which all computers–to say nothing of computerized intelligence–rests and the pitifully poor care that has been taken of the infrastructure that produces the electricity on which so much of our life depends–to say nothing of computerized intelligence.
MCS
Comment by MCS — June 17, 2008 @ 12:50 pm
Jim,
I realize this is not quite what you are talking about, but I just finished reading THE FEMALE BRAIN by Louann Brizendine. I’ll skip some of the criticisms I have of the book, one of which is that is it waaaaay tooo simplified, and skip directly to a general impression I had when I finished reading this book.
I found that it started to bore me–and not for the reasons a book would normally bore me. I was bored because the farther I got in reading this book, the more everything was reduced to a “brain.” And while this book was devoted to explaining the “female” brain, the “male” brain got itself included also in the material.
The more I read, the more the greatest to the simplest emotion was reduced simply to “brain workings.” The more I read, the more what sometimes may be thought of as the “mysteries” of life were reduced to the workings of the brain.
At first, I thought, well, perhaps I may not agree with all of this material; but why not hear out (read out) the entirety of the thought about this topic? What can hurt? I might even learn something. But then the farther on I went, the more truly bored I became.
I found myself having the same feeling as I had when I told the doctor that it “took a while before my husband actually seemed dead,” when he died at home with my holding his hand. The doctor’s answer was: “Well, it takes some time for the heart to totally stop beating.” My reaction then was that the man had no clue: Regardless of how long a heart may take to stop beating and make the person “seem” to be actually dead–I KNEW that there was more to it. I actually had FELT the presence of my husband in the room near me, realized that that presence no longer was in his body, and knew without doubt that whatever one wanted to call it, his “spirit” (or whatever name one wants to apply here) was actually present for a period of time after he died. I felt it when he left.
So, as unscientific as it may be, I wonder whether AI–or whatever name they wish to call computerized intelligence now–will ever have “spirit” inhabiting it. OR….. will AI have it’s own, different kind of “spirit” eventually inhabiting it?
And I do not wish to even HEAR how I was projecting the presence of my husband, blah, blah, blah. The simple fact of the matter is that one is aware of the “presence” of a person when the person is near; when the person is not near, the “presence” is gone. This phenomenon occurs when one is alive–and I add–dead.
So, while all the “parallel processing” and “neural nets” may produce some kind of intelligence, I cannot help but consider that it will be different in kind from that of humans.
And then on another tangent (I realize all the above is tangential to your main tho’t in this blog), I cannot help but wonder about the “thin thread” of electricity on which all computers–to say nothing of computerized intelligence–rests and the pitifully poor care that has been taken of the infrastructure that produces the electricity on which so much of our life depends–to say nothing of computerized intelligence.
MCS
Comment by MCS — June 17, 2008 @ 12:50 pm