Connectionists: Does AI need to replicate the human mind?

[Rothganger, Fredrick]

I'd like to pick up on one point Gary mentions. There are plenty of applications of AI that don't require replicating the human mind.

However, replicating the human mind is a worthy goal in and of itself, independent of applications. If we accept certain positions in the philosophy of mind, such as functionalism and materialism, then replicating the human mind in a machine is a scientific quest to understand ourselves in the most precise way possible: a computable model. This is the same motivation shared by psychology and other social sciences.

A complete computable model of the human mind should also explain all relevant observations from neuroscience, even if it is not literally a whole-brain model.


________________________________
From: Connectionists <connectionists-bounces at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu> on behalf of Gary Marcus <gary.marcus at nyu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 8, 2023 7:35 AM
To: Grossberg, Stephen <steve at bu.edu>
Cc: connectionists at cs.cmu.edu <connectionists at cs.cmu.edu>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Connectionists: Sentient AI Survey Results

I would add to the below that there are multiple reasons why current models are neither trustworthy nor reliable (e.g., also because they lack world models and adequate robust processes for reasoning) but Stephen has really hit the nail on the head here. AI doesn’t need to *replicate* the human mind, but current systems very much do “omit key processes that make humans intelligent”, and the fact that they are untrustworthy and unreliable follows directly from there.

We must consider alternative approaches if we are to rectify the untrustworthiness and unreliability.

> On Jun 8, 2023, at 00:27, Grossberg, Stephen <steve at bu.edu> wrote:
>
> Deep Learning, and related models, are biologically impossible and omit key processes that make humans intelligent, in addition to being UNTRUSTWORTHY (because they are NOT EXPLAINABLE) and UNRELIABLE (because they experience CATASTROPHIC FORGETTING).

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/pipermail/connectionists/attachments/20230609/3bb9a5cf/attachment.html>