What Computers Still Can't Do
“What Computers Still Can't Do” written by the philosopher Hubert L Dreyfus
(1) exposes the shortcoming of Artificial Intelligence (AI), like the
claim that in order to act intelligently people must have a model of
the world in their mind. Which is known as mental representation of the
world. According to Herbert Simon this model is a system of symbols which
serve as representations of reality, and since computers manipulate
symbols they may act intelligently like people. Dreyfus maintains that
disembodied machines cannot mimic human intelligence and hitherto he was
right. The embodiment concept is discussed
elsewhere.
One may argue that today’s computers, are still too slow for such
a task. What about computer systems, like the WEB? Might the WEB act intelligently?
“Not at all!” says Dreyfus, since the WEB is disembodied. True, it has
some embodiment, like SKYPE or VOIP yet this is not enough. The WEB is
only a tool and not an intelligent machine.
What Dreyfus fails to realize is that the WEB is a living system embodied
by its users. So why can’t it be intelligent? Elsewhere I mentioned
other living systems, like the stock exchange which cannot be labeled
as intelligent. What kind of embodiment is required to make an intelligent
system?
At the time when AI (artificial intelligence) was named by John McCarthy,
Wittgenstein's philosophical investigations came out against mental representations.
Heidegger had already done so in 1927 with “Being in Time”. Yet
the AI researchers still ignore it. They are followed by neuroscientists
who place mental representations into the brain. Other regard the brain
as a computer. A neural net of representations. They ought to wake up
from their Cartesian slumber and turn to phenomenology which is the motto
of the present trail.
An intelligent machine can be created only if adopting the viewpoint of
phenomenology, which criticizes the notion of mental representation. Yet
phenomenology does not point the way to the creation of an intelligent
machine. It only explains why Cartesian reductionism is wrong. Nevertheless
it is a basis from which AI ought to continue. To me phenomenology is
a way to tackle complexity. Embodiment is an attribute of a complex system.
It can be realized even in a relatively
simple two CA system. (v also)
References
1. Hubert L. Dreyfus What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critique
of Artificial Reason
ISBN 0-262-54067-3
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people5/Dreyfus/dreyfus-con0.html
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