A recent piece in the UK's Guardian newspaper by Charles Arthur gives a good example of a) poor journalism and b) ignorance of what artificial intelligence researchers are actually trying to achieve. The original article is here, but if you'd rather read it later then allow me to summarise - the piece is entitled Artificial Intelligence: God Help Us If Machines Ever Think Like People and in it, the writer argues that:
Machine intelligence shouldn't be modelled on the human mind because we are inherently flawed beings, caught in an eternal battle between logic and instinct. Any machine with a brain modelled on the human mind will thus end up neurotic and ineffectual.
The piece shows little understanding of why AI researchers are trying to create machines and systems that possess high speed sensory processing, vast memory reserves, the ability to adapt to fluid environments, objection recognition in a variety of locations from small amounts of basic data, adaptability, language, sense of self and so on. There are a whole range of things which we humans are quite brilliant at and which any robot should be endowed with in order for it to be able to function successfully in our world. So why wouldn't scientists want to model their machines on proven biological models?
Articles of the God Help Us... variety often appear anytime someone or something pops up that is left of field or is in some way visionary. When mainstream outlets like The Guardian publish these non-think pieces, one could be forgiven for concluding that their goal is not to inform but actually to permeate a state of ill-informed, post-modern ennui.
(originally published 3rd July 2008)
Dr Ian Hocking said:
Hey Richard - Just thought I'd pop by and say hello. I read 'Robophobia' a couple of years back and enjoyed it. Feel free to pop around to my blog (http://ianhocking.com) if you fancy an interview on the blog to publicise your new book...
Cheers
Ian
Cheers
Ian
(15th July 2008)
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