Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
Artificial intelligence research before the 1980s simulated intelligence using logic and high-level abstract symbols (an approach called Good old-fashioned AI). This "disembodied" approach ran into serious difficulties in the 1970s and 80s, as researchers discovered that abstract, disembodied reasoning was highly inefficient and could not achieve human-levels of competence on many simple tasks. Funding agencies (such as DARPA) withdrew funding because the field of AI had failed to achieve its stated objectives, leading to difficult period now known as the "AI winter". Many AI researchers began to doubt that high level symbolic reasoning could ever perform well enough to solve simple problems. In recent decades, AI research has achieved a significant amount of success by using "embodied" approaches; that is, by directly simulating the functions we associate with the body (such as perception and motion) without using logic or any similar representation. The experience of AI research provides another line of evidence supporting the embodied mind thesis.
Read more about this topic: Embodied Cognition
Famous quotes containing the words artificial and/or intelligence:
“Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded—a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth, family and position.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“The information links are like nerves that pervade and help to animate the human organism. The sensors and monitors are analogous to the human senses that put us in touch with the world. Data bases correspond to memory; the information processors perform the function of human reasoning and comprehension. Once the postmodern infrastructure is reasonably integrated, it will greatly exceed human intelligence in reach, acuity, capacity, and precision.”
—Albert Borgman, U.S. educator, author. Crossing the Postmodern Divide, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1992)