Artificial Intelligence: What Went Wrong - Literature review Example

?Artificial Intelligence: What Went Wrong? As a civilization or a society evolves and progresses, there are challenges on every step of success which the people of the civilization have to face and find probable solutions for the challenges so that they can proceed and revolutionize their past so that they can live a better future. Sometimes the people get stuck with such challenges that it takes almost ages to solve that challenge; while on the other hand certain challenges can easily be handled. A challenge which has persistently remained a challenge for a number of decades is the process of understanding oneself, decoding what is inside our bodies and brain, the working and mechanism which makes our brain work and makes us so intelligent, the circuitry of our brain and many other such questions which are relevant on the design and working of our minds. A number of fields have taken up the challenge to solve the mystery behind the working and design of human brain such as psychology, computer studies, philosophy, and neurosciences. Experts of each field have devoted their entire lives to study the architecture of human brain but almost most of them have taken the wrong approach by making quick decisions and basing their work on little valid and approved information (Garfield, 1990). The study of brain is an extremely complex thing to study and requires in depth research and vast study, and whatever conclusions and results are drawn, they must be based on accurate and approved information. The scientists which have worked up till now have based their works on very less information and have made conclusions on apparent evidences instead of searching in depth and detail. Such a complex thing cannot be explained by simple apparent evidences (Banerji, 1969). John McCarthy, a computer scientist, has devised the term “Artificial Intelligence” for implementing the architecture and design of human brain into computer by using hardware. His purpose was to make man made human brain with the help of manmade hardware devices instead of using tissues, neurons, and nerves; he wanted to make an intelligent enough system which would work much similar to the human brain (Katz, 2012). But some of his colleagues including the famous American linguistic Noam Chomsky felt that it was more necessary to study the working and design of the human brain and other animal brains before making any such system equivalent to the brain. They suggested that without having a complete command on the structure and assembly of the brain it cannot be possible to make an intelligent enough system. Once the scientists are able to identify the mechanism behind the brain than the design of intelligent systems and intelligent robots will then no longer be a difficult task. Noam Chomsky along with other colleague scientists who have studied and are studying on the assembling and design of brain have given birth to the field of cognitive science. Noam Chomsky is a prominent linguistic and a notorious professor of linguistics and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also a famous critique of the foreign policy of America (Garfield, 1990). In order to make and progress in the study of brain structure Chomsky along with the colleague scientists had to turn down the then famous standard set by Skinner on the concept regarding behaviorism. According to his concept he had made a simple association between the actions of a person and the reasons behind the action that is generally considered as the stimulus. Chomsky declared that such a complex study cannot be done by simple conclusions as presented by Skinner. Chomsky’s studies regarding linguistics and language have made him able to suggest that the complexities of mind assembling and architecture cannot be explained by simple associations to the meek concepts of response and stimulus. He states that language is such a rich field and so complex that it can be connected to simple associations. He suggests that the part of the brain which is associated with the interpretation of linguistics must be studied in the same manner as the other systems of the body like circulatory system, digestive system, etc. (Katz, 2012). Biological systems vary in their complexity level; some of the systems are very complex and difficult to study while on the other hand some are simpler to study. David Marr, a famous neuroscientist, has devised a methodology to study these complex systems. The method comprises of three steps or processes. The three level process comprises of the computational level, algorithmic level and the implementation level (Garfield, 1990). The first step helps to identify the task being performed by the system and the things that are taken in by the system and after being processed what is given out by the system. The second step helps to explain the working of the system by which it helps to converts the input of the system to the output of the system. The third step helps to explain the process by which the body’s cells and tissues get the system working and get the output. All the previous scientists worked on the external behavior of the humans instead of studying and researching on the internal structure of the brain. Chomsky and Marr took a different approach to this research and made research on the internal working of the brain. It is important to understand the internal structure of the brain so that its working can be understood; this is much similar to analyze the working of the computer system by studying the internal hardware of the computer system (Banerji, 1969). On the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a symposium was held on “Brains, Minds and Machines” (Katz, 2012) and many renowned scientists, neurologists, neuroscientists and psychologists took part in the symposium. This symposium was arranged in order to discuss the work that has been done and is being done in the field of artificial intelligence and what would be the future of artificial intelligence. In this symposium the famous Noam Chomsky also participated, he was a bit skeptical about the way the work was being carried out for the development in the field of artificial intelligence. He was critical and criticized on the fact that the study that was being carried for the research in artificial intelligence it was majorly being carried out by the old concept of behaviorism which is only a study of the outer or external behavior not the internal working of the brain. He argued that the statistical techniques cannot be used or if used they will not yield the desired optimum result that must be acquired in order to progress and advance. This technique will not be able to produce acceptable and accurate conclusions which are a must for the field of science and cognition. A famous artificial intelligence researcher defended the methods and techniques that are being applied and said that methods similar to the methods that are adopted for research in other fields of sciences are being used for the purpose of research in the field of artificial intelligence and cognitive science as well. Although Chomsky agreed to the fact that statistical techniques are useful for an applied approach but cannot be used for this field of science (Banerji, 1969). Researchers of other fields of sciences have also applied the technique presented by Chomsky to other fields of sciences and have made remarkable discoveries and working and manipulation of data simpler and easy. Particularly in the study of genes, chromosomes and DNA structures, this technique has made remarkable contributions and has made the study much easier. A technique called as sequencing revolution has in fact revolutionized the field of medicine and have helped scientists and researchers to develop customized medicines that is to develop medicines according to the needs of the patient and according to the genes of the patient. This has definitely helped a lot in improving the health conditions of the people and improved and revolutionized the field of medicine. By the success and advancements in the field of medicine and other fields by the use of sequencing revolution has helped to study those facts and fields which had been declared by Chomsky as unused and unanalyzed. This new technique has benefitted the field of biology the most as compared to other sciences. Chomsky declared that this new method could be applied to the field of studying and understanding brain. He suggested that using this technique a circuit diagram or a map of the brain could be drawn and then the internal circuitry of the brain could be studied. Brenner, a geneticist, however, said that drawing the map of the brain is total madness and physically not possible to do (Katz, 2012). Biology and artificial intelligence are the two fields that include extreme complex structures and phenomenon and require the involvement of special techniques for their study and generally reverse engineering is used to study the enigmatic behind such multifaceted structures and systems. New methodologies and techniques are being constantly developed in order to make the study of these complicated and multi-dimensional systems and quite an amount of information has been unfolded but much of the extracted information is usually irrelevant to the field. The thing that worries the scientists most is that the large amounts of information that is obtained is related to what part of the study or relevant to which field and which part of the study. The scientists are not able to gain control over their desire to obtain more and more information from the different scientific techniques and new methodologies. The scientists are day by day becoming more and more restless on getting information and applying the acquired information into their research and study and obtain some conclusions and positive results. Reverse engineering usually make the scientists to land into huge amounts of data out of which most of it is useless in the research process and study (Garfield, 1990). Chomsky when asked the reason about the failure of artificial sciences, he replied that like all other fields of sciences like physics and chemistry studying the brain is completely different, it is not possible to study the brain the same way as other topics and phenomenon are studied. The neuroscientists have taken the wrong direction in their research as they have taken the statistical approach and that is why they have not been able to make considerable progress. He said that the approach mentioned by Marr that is the study of any complex system into three levels is definitely a fine approach to study the brain. Brain of the humans and each and every animal is different and it is necessary that one knows the tasks that the brain performs and after knowing this then only the scientists can know how to continue the research. It is much similar to the study of large computational systems in which firstly the task that is being performed is found out and then according to that the smaller systems and units required for the processing and performance of the explained task can be understood and studied. He says that sadly the scientists and researchers are working only on those techniques and methods that have already been developed. It is not necessary that each and every system and field can be accurately studied using the conventional methods, it is of great importance that the researcher thinks differently and applies different approaches to study different systems. It is a necessity that the scientists and researchers think out of the box and look beyond the horizons and the approach explained by Marr is definitely unique and different and Chomsky believes that if this approach is used it will definitely yield some better and accurate results as compared to the results that have been obtained by the conventional methods (Banerji, 1969). Chomsky is one unique personality with unparalleled intellect and visualization. He is a researcher in the field of linguistics and cognitive sciences and always uses diverse and unique approaches to study the various processes and systems of the respective field and never sticks to the conventional methods. He is no doubt a gem stone in the field of linguistics and cognitive sciences. Reference List Banerji, R.B. (1969). Theory of problem solving. An Approach to Artificial Intelligence. New York-London-Amsterdam: Elsevier Pub. Co. Garfield, J.L. (ed.) (1990). Foundations of Cognitive Science: The essential readings. New York: Paragon House. Katz, Y. (2012). Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong. Available from [Accessed 13 January 2013]. Read More