"Machines who think -- how utterly preposterous," huff
beleaguered humanists, defending their dwindling turf. "Artificial
Intelligence -- it's here and about to surpass our own," crow
techno-visionaries, proclaiming dominion. It's so simple and
obvious, each side maintains, only a fanatic could disagree.
Deciding where the truth lies between these two extremes is the
main purpose of John Haugeland's marvelously lucid and witty book
on what artificial intelligence is all about. Although presented
entirely in non-technical terms, it neither oversimplifies the
science nor evades the fundamental philosophical issues. Far from
ducking the really hard questions, it takes them on, one by
one.
Artificial intelligence, Haugeland notes, is based on a very
good idea, which might well be right, and just as well might not.
That idea, the idea that human thinking and machine computing are
"radically the same," provides the central theme for his
illuminating and provocative book about this exciting new field.
After a brief but revealing digression in intellectual history,
Haugeland systematically tackles such basic questions as: What is a
computer really? How can a physical object "mean" anything? What
are the options for computational organization? and What structures
have been proposed and tried as actual scientific models for
intelligence?
In a concluding chapter he takes up several outstanding problems
and puzzles -- including intelligence in action, imagery, feelings
and personality -- and their enigmatic prospects for solution.
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