What Does Watson Tell Us About the Philosophy of AI?

 Artificial Intelligence  

Recently, long-time AI researcher Selmer Bringsjord presented a lecture at Oxford on the future directions of artificial intelligence based on where Watson has already been. Bringjord shows how a clear map of logic-space can help bring about true person-aspiring AI.

When IBM's Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997, Selmer Bringsjord complained that chess is too easy, relative to what the human mind can muster. Then, in 2011, playing a game based in human language, IBM's Watson beat the best human Jeopardy! players on the planet.

Bringsjord, author of Superminds: People Harness Hypercomputation, and More, in a recent lecture at Oxford presented how David Ferrucci's work and success on the Watson project was not surprising to him.  He cites Ferruci's previous work on the UIMA project as evidence that the IBM team was on the right path to win the game show.

Research teams are now working with IBM to make Watson smarter.  According to Bringsjord, "We're working toward Watson n.0, and beyond."

By way of this development, Bringsjord asks, "What does Watson's prowess, and the engineering now underway to make him smarter, tell us about the philosophy, theory, and future of AI?"

Image Source: Bringsjord via http://pt-ai.org/2013/program

Bringsjord presents and defends an answer to this question, one that among other things implies that a key, foundational hierarchy among computational formal logics provide a framework for predicting the future of the interaction between people and increasingly intelligent computing machines.

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He shows how this future was probably anticipated and called for in no small part by Leibniz, who thought that God, in giving us formal logic for capturing mathematics, sent a hint to humans that they should search for a formal logic able to capture cognition across the full span of human intelligence.

Bringsjord is a professor of Computer Science and Cognitive Science. He conducts research in artificial intelligence as the director of the Rensselaer AI & Reasoning Lab (RAIR). Controversially, he has advocated counter-terrorism security insured by pervasive, all-seeing sensors; automated reasoners; and autonomous, lethal robots.

(Full Slides for the above presentation are available at: http://pt-ai.org/sites/default/files/ptai2013/presentations/Selmer-Bringsjord.pdf)



SOURCE  Future of Humanity Institute

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