Friday, February 29, 2008
Bryan Appleyard on AI
In a book review in The Sunday Times books (p. 40-41) a couple of weekends ago Bryan Appleyard passed some interestingh comments upon the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and consciousness studies:
'For this is a field where there are, for the moment, no convincing theories or conclusions. There has probably been more discussion of human consciousness in the past 50 years than there was in the previous 10 millenniums. But still we know, to a rough aproximation, nothing...For 50 years, scientists have been promising us artificial intelligence (AI)... But the prosaic truth is that AI is utterly stalled.' ('Machines have feelings, too')
In other words (and contrary to Appleyard's title), the attempt to reduce mind to body is, fundamentally speaking, a dead duck.
'For this is a field where there are, for the moment, no convincing theories or conclusions. There has probably been more discussion of human consciousness in the past 50 years than there was in the previous 10 millenniums. But still we know, to a rough aproximation, nothing...For 50 years, scientists have been promising us artificial intelligence (AI)... But the prosaic truth is that AI is utterly stalled.' ('Machines have feelings, too')
In other words (and contrary to Appleyard's title), the attempt to reduce mind to body is, fundamentally speaking, a dead duck.
