machinery of the mind ¶ Lytspeed Communications

The Tomorrow Makers

By: Grant Fjermedal

Type: Non-fiction survey with touches of biography

Setting: N/A

Description:

Based on interviews with some of the most notable cognitive science researchers in the country and their students, Fjermedal’s book walks the line between non-fiction and biography. Without going into the messy details, he shows that many people in the world believe in the possibility (probability?) of building robots and computers “smart” enough to hold carbon copies of a human mind and continue its thinking processes after the download.

Comments:

Fjermedal realizes something that not many other survey interviewers do: in an institutional setting, the big names aren’t necessarily the ones who do the most work. Fjermedal not only concentrates on the big fish in the AI pond, such as Marvin Minsky, Joseph Weizenbaum, John McCarthy, Allen Newell, Gerald Jay Sussman and Danny Hillis. He also focuses on the students. Many of them stay up for days at a time working on projects with the kind of dedication that most people don’t give to their careers. They deserve a round of applause, and Fjermedal gives it to them. The student viewpoint is also interestingly fresh because they are accomplished dreamers. They are not afraid to speak of what they think will happen twenty or thirty years down the road. Whereas some university professors will pad their opinions and say, “Well, that might happen someday,” the students respond with, “That will happen. And I’ll do it.” This approach may not be entirely realistic, but reality is not necessarily a good culture for new ideas.

Recommendations:

This book, combined with Machinery of the Mind, by George Johnson, works well as a non-technical survey of the directions of artificial intelligence and the people driving there. Fjermedal goes a little more into the personalities and the distance possibilities than Johnson does, but the two books give a consistent view of the field. Specifically, Fjermedal tries to show why the researchers are trying to create intelligent computers and shows the energy with which they are working.

Machinery of the Mind

By: George Johnson

Type: Non-fiction survey of AI

Setting: N/A

Description:

During a year of intensive study, George Johnson travelled around the country to conventions, interviewed prominent researchers in the field of cognitive science and read just about everything there is to read on the use of machines to model human intelligence.

Comments:

Although a few years out of date, Johnson’s book is still a fresh, easy to understand look at the advances in the new science of artificial intelligence (or cognitive science, as some researchers prefer to call it.) Johnson is a good writer, and is obviously an intelligent man. He understands the concepts presented in his book, even though the knowledge comes from many different fields, all of which meet at the center of cognitive science. MotM makes a valient effort to present different sides of the artificial intelligence issue, devoting time to the “engineers,” the people concerned with presenting a working product that doesn’t necessarily have to model human intelligence, and the “scientists,” the heavy-hitters in the AI world who are trying to accurately model the workings of the human mind, whether it is practical or not. I got the impression that Johnson favors the pure research side more than the commercial aspects.

Recommendations:

This is a great introductory text to artificial intelligence research. I wish I had had it when I started reading Gödel, Escher, Bach many years ago!.