Breaking Out of the Black Box

<body> Dangerous Ideas is lynx-friendly, at least partially. <BR><BR> The following is only the teaser, but if you ask, I'll take the time to transcribe the slides into a more text friendly version. Just send mail to gremio at ai dot mit dot edu. <HR> <CENTER> <H1> Breaking Out of the Black Box </H1> <H1> Martin C. Martin </H1> <H3> <a href="http://www.ai.mit.edu/lab/dangerous-ideas/">The Seminar on Dangerous Ideas</a> </H3> <H3> 1 p.m. Wednesday, October 31, 2001 </H3> </CENTER> <P> Systems constructed by nature, such as the human brain, have a very different organization than systems constructed by people, such as Artificial Intelligence programs. In particular, I compare psychology's understanding of perception to current computer perception. The key difference is that computer perception software is built out of "black boxes," which have very restricted interactions with each other. In contrast, the human perceptual system is much more integrated. </P> <P> The practical claim is that a computer program that performs any significant task, and does it as well as a person, cannot be created out of "black boxes." In fact, it would probably be too interconnected to be designed by hand. Instead, tools will be needed to create such designs. </P> <P> The theoretical claim is that the architecture of a system is the wrong emphasis for both psychological and engineering theories. A distinction is made between "exclusive frameworks," which get their power by specifying what form the architecture should take, and "inclusive frameworks," which allow many solutions of different flavours to work together. It is argued that most, if not all, psychological and engineering frameworks are exclusive, but that the human brain, and any truly intelligent computer program, would embody an inclusive framework. </P> </body>