Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - (Page 18) So what about the engineering side of AI, what about real working systems that solve real problems? encyclopedia’s knowledge into the computer, but extending every entry so that all underlying assumptions—all common sense and background knowledge—[were] also entered,” Yaeger says. Cyc has evolved in its goals, but “[i]f there’s any hope of making GOFAI work…Cyc seems like its best hope.” But Brooks cautions, “we still have great challenges in making these systems as flexible, as deep, and as intellectually resilient as a two-year-old child.” Winograd thinks that the symbolist approach will never get there: “In order to build human-like intelligence,” he says, “researchers will need to base it on a deep understanding of how real nervous systems are structured and how they operate.” Connectionism, it seems, is ascendant. The word “connectionist” was first used in the context of mental models by D.O. Hebb in 1949, but its influence on AI researchers dates to Rosenblatt’s use in his Perceptrons paper in 1958. Minsky and Papert killed the näive perceptron model stone dead in 1969 and more or less interred connectionism along with it, until Parallel Distributed Processing resurrected it in 1987. “The idea behind connectionism,” Yaeger says, “is that key aspects of brain behavior simply cannot be modeled at the symbolic level, and by working closer to the physical system underlying human thought—the brain and its neurons and synapses—we stand both a much greater chance of succeeding at producing AI and of understanding how it relates to real human thought.” Yaeger is wholeheartedly in the connectionist camp, and in particular in the tradition spearheaded by John Holland and advanced by Stephen Wolfram and Chris Langton and others, cellular automata and Artificial Life. The connectionist approach is basically synthesis, or bottomup, the symbolist approach is analysis, top-down. Both are doubtless necessary. “[S]ymbols-only AI is not enough, [but] subsymbolic perceptual processes are not enough either,” Winston says. 18 Dr. Dobb’s Journal l www.ddj.com l October 2007 http://oreilly.com http://oreilly.com http://www.ddj.com
Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 Cover Contents Hmmmm Alia Vox Developer Diaries Developer’s Notebook AI: It’s OK Again! Conversations Visual Cryptography and Bit-Plane Complexity Segmentation Inside the Windows Vista Disk Encryption Algorithm Memory-Aware Components Software and the Core Description Process Logging In C++ Effective Concurrency The Agile Edge Swaine’s Flames Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Cover (Page Cover1) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Cover (Page Cover2) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Cover (Page 1) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Cover (Page 2) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Cover (Page 3) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Contents (Page 4) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Contents (Page 5) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Hmmmm (Page 6) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Hmmmm (Page 7) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Hmmmm (Page 8) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Hmmmm (Page 9) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Alia Vox (Page 10) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Alia Vox (Page 11) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Developer Diaries (Page 12) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Developer Diaries (Page 13) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Developer’s Notebook (Page 14) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Developer’s Notebook (Page 15) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - AI: It’s OK Again! (Page 16) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - AI: It’s OK Again! (Page 17) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - AI: It’s OK Again! (Page 18) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - AI: It’s OK Again! (Page 19) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Conversations (Page 20) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Conversations (Page 21) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Visual Cryptography and Bit-Plane Complexity Segmentation (Page 22) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Visual Cryptography and Bit-Plane Complexity Segmentation (Page 23) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Visual Cryptography and Bit-Plane Complexity Segmentation (Page 24) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Visual Cryptography and Bit-Plane Complexity Segmentation (Page 25) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Visual Cryptography and Bit-Plane Complexity Segmentation (Page 26) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Visual Cryptography and Bit-Plane Complexity Segmentation (Page 27) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Visual Cryptography and Bit-Plane Complexity Segmentation (Page 28) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Visual Cryptography and Bit-Plane Complexity Segmentation (Page 29) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Inside the Windows Vista Disk Encryption Algorithm (Page 30) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Inside the Windows Vista Disk Encryption Algorithm (Page 31) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Inside the Windows Vista Disk Encryption Algorithm (Page 32) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Inside the Windows Vista Disk Encryption Algorithm (Page 33) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Memory-Aware Components (Page 34) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Memory-Aware Components (Page 35) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Memory-Aware Components (Page 36) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Memory-Aware Components (Page 37) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Memory-Aware Components (Page 38) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Memory-Aware Components (Page 39) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Memory-Aware Components (Page 40) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Memory-Aware Components (Page 41) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Software and the Core Description Process (Page 42) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Software and the Core Description Process (Page 43) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Software and the Core Description Process (Page 44) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Software and the Core Description Process (Page 45) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Software and the Core Description Process (Page 46) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Software and the Core Description Process (Page 47) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Software and the Core Description Process (Page 48) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Software and the Core Description Process (Page 49) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Logging In C++ (Page 50) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Logging In C++ (Page 51) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Logging In C++ (Page 52) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Logging In C++ (Page 53) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Logging In C++ (Page 54) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Logging In C++ (Page 55) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Logging In C++ (Page 56) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Effective Concurrency (Page 57) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Effective Concurrency (Page 58) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Effective Concurrency (Page 59) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - The Agile Edge (Page 60) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - The Agile Edge (Page 61) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - The Agile Edge (Page 62) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - The Agile Edge (Page 63) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Swaine’s Flames (Page 64) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Swaine’s Flames (Page Cover3) Dr. Dobb's Journal - October 2007 - Swaine’s Flames (Page Cover4)
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