The first panel discussion here at Accelerating Change 2005
was on the Prospects of AI. The panel includes an impressive line-up of people:
Neil Jacobstein, Chair, Innovative Applications of AI 2005;
CEO, Teknowledge
Patrick Lincoln, Director, Computer Science
Lab, SRI International
Peter Norvig, Director of Search
Quality, Google; Author, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
(the world’s leading texbook in AI)
Bruno Olshausen,
Director, Redwood Ctr for Theoretical Neuroscience
The introduction by Neil gave an overview of the many Task Areas being explored in the development of Artificial Intelligence.
The key aspects of development are in Knowledge Engineering, Systems
Engineering, and Business & Cultural. In his bullets about
Ontologies and the Semantic Web, he referenced examples of early work –
Cyc (OpenCyc), SUMO, and OWL.
The second speaker, Patrick, talked to the value of AI – Intelligence
Amplification – and why this is necessary. The increasing gap
between the complexities of technology, and human capabilities is
causing more and more failures. AI can augment our ability to
design complex systems, debug complex systems, and even operate complex
systems. He talked about AI providing powerful abstracations – at
the right levels – for both designers and operators. His examples included the progress and predictions in the uses of UAVs.
Third was Peter, from Google, who started with a slide titled AI in the Middle. His comments were about AI existing between authors and readers. His first point was about Machine Learning
… and joked about the fact that we don’t know how to do it. His
comments on AI in the Middle included how authors can write trillions
of words, systems can detect certain patterns, and intelligent readers
can then actually sort through this and find information. He went
on to give examples of where apparent intelligence can emerge from
larger amounts of data . .. giving examples of the accuracy of Arabic
translation based on larger and larger data sets of example translation.
Bruno was the final panel speaker, and his area of research –
Theoretical Neuroscience – is looking to the brain to gain insights
into AI. The
view of his team is to understand intelligence by understanding the
brain. Not only the human brain … but also other animal
brains. One example is Jumping Spiders. He reviewed the knowledge that they have gained, and some interesting
points that they are exploring. One area they have
learned about involves vision, and where for each neural connection of retinal data (vision) coming in
from the outside world, there are 10 times as many feedback connections
coming from the cortex of the brain. So there is more information coming from the model in our own brain of what we are seeing, then the actual
information being sensed! The model that we have in our mind
contributes more feedback that what we are actually seeing! He
explained that this is only one rich feedback loop that they are
working to better understand.
It seems that all of the speakers look at advanced AI arising out of
the shear number of patterns and complexities of their foundation
work. I have to agree with them … what we
perceive as AI just might end up being an emergent property of
the systems that we are creating … not the explicit result of the
planning and construction of the system.