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Below is a link to an interesting interview with Noam Chomsky about why he believes current approaches to Artificial Intelligence are wrong.
Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong
Unfortunately, Chomsky is more widely known for his political views than his scientific and philosophical views — so just ignore those political views for now to learn from Chomsky as a philosopher of science. Chomsky compares the state of mainstream AI research now to where linguistics was back in the 1960s, in particular, in the same way that behavioralists treated an animals’s actions and thoughts as a black box where statistical associations between stimulus and response were seen as an adequate explanation.
To articulate my own thoughts, I will consider the two opposing views (Chomsky vs. Norvig) from my perspective as a scientist outside this field. Whenever there’s a ‘vs.’ in each of the headings, the first term on the left hand side are related across headings. In other words, my intention is roughly:
- Chomsky = {Science, Simulation, Rockets, Theory}
- Norvig = {Engineering, Emulation, Birds, Application}
1. Science vs. Engineering
Science seeks to understand fundamental principles of natural phenomena, with complete understanding only…
