Machines of Loving Grace

The title of this post is identical to the title of an excellent book by John Markoff. The subtitle is “The Quest for Common Ground.” The common ground referred to is that between humans and robots. The book covers, in excruciating detail, the development of artificial intelligence from the days of J.C.R. Licklider to 2015.

The book covers two lines of development. One from John McCarthy, which Markoff terms Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the other by Douglas Englebart, which Markoff terms Intelligence Augmented (IA). The former is concerned with making computers as smart as they can be, and the latter is concerned with using computers to augment human intelligence.

Markoff does not break down AI any further, but it needs to be. AI has been used by psychologists to model human cognition. So the ultimate goal here is to develop an understanding of human cognitive processes. AI has been quite informative. In attempting to model problems such as human vision, psychologists realized that they had overlooked some critical processes that were needed to explain perception. One should also regard AI as being a tool needed to develop theories of psychological processes.

There are also two types of AI. One is known as GOFIA, “Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence” where computer code is developed to accomplish the task. GOFIA was stymied for a while due to the computational complexity it faced. Judea Pearl, the father of decapitated journalist Daniel, is a superb mathematician and logician. He developed Bayesian networks that successfully dealt with this problem and GOFIA proceeded further on with this expedited approach (enter “Pearl” into the search block of the healthy memory blog to learn more about this genius).

The other type is, or are neural nets. Here neural nets are designed to learn how to to accomplish a task. The problem with neural nets is that the programmers do not know how to solve the problem, rather they know how to design a neural net that solves the problem. Nightmare scenarios where computers take over the world would be the product of neural nets. With GOFAI problems could be solved by deleting lines of code.

Augmenting intelligence IA is what HM promotes. Here computer code serves as a mental prosthetic to enhance human knowledge and understanding. IA, unless it was the intelligence of a mad scientist, would not constitute a threat to humanity.

It is true that AI is required for robots to perform tasks that are difficult, boring, or dangerous. But the goal of an AI system must be understood or undesired consequences might result.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Gone to the 2014 Meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA)

There will be a brief hiatus in new blog posts while I attend, assimilate, and perhaps write some new blog posts. However, with 500 plus posts already posted, I think there is plenty to read and consider in the meantime. The category mnemonic techniques contains not only techniques for directly improving memory, but also posts on mindfulness and meditation. The category transactive memory has posts on how to use technology and interact with our fellow humans to promote memory health and to grow cognitively The category Human Memory Theory and Data has posts on the fascinating and relevant topic of human cognition.

Please use the healthymemory blog’s search block. You might be surprised by the diversity of topics you will see covered.