Connectionists: FW: AI at 50 videos...

[Gabriele Scheler]

There is another variant to this, when high-information neurons develop
during learning and serve as  "index neurons", "concept neurons",
linking features to them.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40120001/


7978335  New   Non-standard memory models with indexed retrieval (tomorrow
on arxiv)

I think fighting over turf is the most damaging aspect of the AI history.
The "AI" wars. There is no need to disparage Wiener anymore than
the Logic Theorist or the Hebbian/weighted graph tradition. Rigorous
ideologically pure "thinking" rarely leads to success in the natural
sciences.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365925517_NIPS_NeurIPS_and_Neuroscience_A_personal_historical_perspective
Especially if it is coupled with raw (military) power.
I'm with Gary Marcus (and Freud) on noticing that suppression of important
parts of a tradition tends to lead to backlashes sooner or later.
BTW Hebb was preceded and probably knew about the work of Jerzy Konorski, a
former pupil of Pawlow, and a persecuted scientist, BTW.
Raw power is rarely successful in the long run.

Gabriele






On Fri, Aug 21, 2026 at 9:13 PM Levine, Daniel S <levine at uta.edu> wrote:

> There are more references on grandmother cells in a 2017 special issue of *Language,
> Cognition, and Neuroscience*:
>
>
>
>
>
> FOR: Bowers, *Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience*, 32, 257-273.
>
> AGAINST: Thomas and French, * Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience*, 32,
> 342-349
>
>
>
> These are also discussed in my book, *Introduction to Neural and
> Cognitive Modeling* (Vol. III, Routledge, 2019).
>
>
>
>
>
> Dan Levine
>
> *From:* Connectionists <connectionists-bounces at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu> *On
> Behalf Of *Asim Roy
> *Sent:* Thursday, August 20, 2026 11:17 PM
> *To:* KENTRIDGE, ROBERT W. <robert.kentridge at durham.ac.uk>; Gary Marcus <
> gary.marcus at nyu.edu>; Stephen José Hanson <jose at rubic.rutgers.edu>; Hava
> Siegelmann (hava.siegelmann at gmail.com) <hava.siegelmann at gmail.com>;
> Juergen Schmidhuber <juergen.schmidhuber at kaust.edu.sa>; Ali Minai <
> minaiaa at gmail.com>
> *Cc:* director at inc.ucsd.edu; connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu
> *Subject:* Re: Connectionists: FW: AI at 50 videos...
>
>
>
> [External]
>
> Charlie Gross was in that discussion with Horace Barlow. So was Itzhak
> Fried and Christof Koch. The referenced Jennifer Aniston experiments were
> conducted under their guidance at UCLA. And so was Walter Freeman and many
> other prominent neuro and cognitive scientists involved in that discussion.
>
>
>
> Gross (2002) characterized grandmother cells as “multimodal.” Reddy and
> Thorpe (2014) also define concepts cells as “invariant, multimodal.” Thus,
> the fundamental characterization of these two concepts is identical.
> “Multimodal invariance” implies associative learning across modalities.
> They also state that concept cells have “*meaning* of a given stimulus in
> a manner that is *invariant* to different representations of that
> stimulus.”
>
>
>
> “*Selectivity or specificity*,” “*complex concept*,” “*meaning*,” “*multimodal
> invariance*” and “*abstractness*” (Reddy and Thorpe, 2014) are all
> integral properties of both concept cells and grandmother cells.
>
>
>
> Reddy and Thorpe (2014) categorically state that “*abstract, invariant
> representations*” is “*a hallmark of MTL concept cells*.” Quiroga (2012)
> also admit that concept cells are abstract: “*These and many other
> examples suggest that MTL neurons encode an abstract* *representation* of
> the concept triggered by the stimulus.”
>
>
>
> Unfortunately, Barwich (2019) is completely flawed in its arguments
> against grandmother cells as argued in Roy’s commentary on the article (Roy
> (2020)).
>
>
>
> The neurophysiological evidence for purely abstract single cell
> representation in the brain points to symbolic representation in the brain. Quiroga
> et al. (2008) estimate that *40% of MTL cells are abstract*. Thus, there
> is extensive use of abstractions at the single cell level in the brain.
> This is the neurophysiological evidence for the neurosymbolic approach and
> what Gary Marcus has been arguing for all along. In a way, both approaches
> win and need each other.
>
>
>
>    1. Barlow H. B. (2009). Grandmother cells, symmetry, and invariance:
>    how the term arose and what the facts suggest, in *The Cognitive
>    Neurosciences, 4th Edn.*, ed GazzanigaM. (Cambridge, MA: MIT
>    Press), 309–320.
>    2. Gross C. G. (2002). Genealogy of the “grandmother cell”.
>    *Neuroscientist*8, 512–518. 10.1016/j.meegid.2016.04.006
>
> 3.            Reddy L. Thorpe S. J. (2014). Concept cells through
> associative learning of high-level representations. *Neuron*
> 84, 248–251. 10.1016/j.neuron.2014.10.004
>
> 4.            Barwich A-S (2019) The Value of Failure in Science: The
> Story of Grandmother Cells in Neuroscience. Front. Neurosci. 13:1121. doi:
> 10.3389/fnins.2019.01121
>
> 5.            Roy A (2020) Commentary: The Value of Failure in Science:
> The Story of Grandmother Cells in Neuroscience. Front. Neurosci. 14:59.
> doi: 10.3389/fnins.2020.00059
>
> 6.            Quiroga R. Q. Kreiman G. Koch C.FriedI. (2008). Sparse but
> not ‘grandmother-cell’ coding in the medial temporal lobe. *Trends Cogn.
> Sci.*12, 87–91. 10.1016/j.tics.2007.12.003
>
>
>
> Asim Roy
>
> Professor, Information Systems
>
> Arizona State University
>
> Lifeboat Foundation Bios: Professor Asim Roy
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/lifeboat.com/ex/bios.asim.roy__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!NHg1P4byXZZmMFLMgr8A4dQNxSlqyvsqWef4wrPXtCXR0f0bo0eMm-rIF8G6ZV0$>
>
> Asim Roy | iSearch (asu.edu) <https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/9973>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* KENTRIDGE, ROBERT W. <robert.kentridge at durham.ac.uk>
> *Sent:* Thursday, August 20, 2026 3:53 AM
> *To:* Asim Roy <ASIM.ROY at asu.edu>; Gary Marcus <gary.marcus at nyu.edu>;
> Stephen José Hanson <jose at rubic.rutgers.edu>
> *Cc:* director at inc.ucsd.edu; connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu
> *Subject:* Re: Connectionists: FW: AI at 50 videos...
>
>
>
> It is worth pointing out that in Jerry Lettvin’s original paper on the
> grandmother cell the concept was presented as a joke. Lettvin certainly
> believed in the notion that one might identify cells in the frog’s brain as
> ‘bug detectors’, but he appeared to be sceptical about the idea that such
> cells might exist in the human brain representing complex concepts like ‘my
> grandmother’. There are a couple of great papers on the history of the
> grandmother cell:
>
>
>
> Ann-Sophie Barwich (2019) The Value of Failure in Science: The Story of
> Grandmother Cells in Neuroscience. Front. Neurosci. 13:1121. doi:
> 10.3389/fnins.2019.01121
>
>
>
> Charles C Gross (2002) Genealogy of the "grandmother cell”. Neuroscientist
> 8(5):512-8. doi: 10.1177/107385802237175.
>
>
>
> I remember chatting to Charlie Gross about this around that time (he also
> reminisced about his part-time job mowing BF Skinner’s lawn).
>
>
>
> People often assume that the Quiroga et al (2005 Nature, 435. 1102 - 1107)
> paper on the Jennifer Aniston cell was positive evidence for the existence
> of grandmother cells in the human brain. This is far from the truth. The
> Jennifer Aniston cell does not only respond to Jennifer Aniston, but also
> to related concepts like ‘Lisa Kudow’ (another actress in ‘Friends’), so
> activity in that cell does not uniquely code ‘Jennifer Aniston’ and cannot
> be used to read out the presence of Jennifer Aniston. Quiroga et al make
> this clear in the discussion of their findings.
>
>
>
> Bob Kentridge
>
>
>
> Psychology Department
>
> University of Durham
>
>
>
> Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
>
> Programme on Brain, Mind and Consciousness
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from Outlook for Mac
>
>
>
> *From: *Connectionists <connectionists-bounces at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu> on
> behalf of Asim Roy <ASIM.ROY at asu.edu>
> *Date: *Thursday, 20 August 2026 at 06:51
> *To: *Gary Marcus <gary.marcus at nyu.edu>; Stephen José Hanson <
> jose at rubic.rutgers.edu>
> *Cc: *director at inc.ucsd.edu <director at inc.ucsd.edu>;
> connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu <
> connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu>
> *Subject: *Re: Connectionists: FW: AI at 50 videos...
>
> *[EXTERNAL EMAIL]*
>
> The Horace Barlow note was after a furious private debate with some
> eminent neuro and cognitive scientists regarding Jennifer Aniston cells
> being evidence for grandmother cells. And this was at age 93 when he
> visited me after defending his theory. At that stage of his career, his
> insights were profound.
>
>
>
> Asim Roy
>
> Professor, Information Systems
>
> Arizona State University
>
> Lifeboat Foundation Bios: Professor Asim Roy
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/lifeboat.com/ex/bios.asim.roy__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!NHg1P4byXZZmMFLMgr8A4dQNxSlqyvsqWef4wrPXtCXR0f0bo0eMm-rIF8G6ZV0$>
>
> Asim Roy | iSearch (asu.edu) <https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/9973>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Asim Roy
> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 19, 2026 6:28 PM
> *To:* 'Gary Marcus' <gary.marcus at nyu.edu>; Stephen José Hanson <
> jose at rubic.rutgers.edu>
> *Cc:* director at inc.ucsd.edu; connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu
> *Subject:* RE: Connectionists: FW: AI at 50 videos...
>
>
>
> I had some communication with Marvin Minsky and Jerry Fodor years ago.
> Here are two quotes from them:
>
>
>
> 1. Marvin Minsky: "Don’t pay any attention to the critics. Don’t even
> ignore them.” -By Sam Goldwyn
>
>
>
> 2. Jerry Fodor: “Arguing with Connectionists is like arguing with
> zombies; both are dead, but neither has noticed it.”
>
>
>
> And here’s a note from a neuroscience pioneer Horace Barlow, Darwin’s
> great-grandson (Horace Barlow - Wikipedia
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Barlow>), winner of many
> neuroscience prizes. Without his pioneering work poking into frog brains
> with microelectrodes, we would NOT have AI as we see it today. The
> grandmother cell theory essentially points to where cognition exists in an
> abstract form. And there is plenty of neurophysiological evidence for such
> single cell abstractions, starting with line orientation cells.
>
>
> ======================================================================================================================================
>
> Dear Asim
>
> Yes, I would like to join your group, though I would (again) like to make
> it clear that the grandmother cell theory is not mine, though I still hold
> that something conforming amazingly well to what was conceptualised by
> Jerry Lettvin 50 years ago, really does exist!
>
> I am still actively interested in the topic, and have just sent off the
> final proofs of an essay bearing on it. I shall send you a copy of the
> final proof as soon as I am allowed to circulate it, and of course the more
> widely discussed it is the better pleased I shall be, though I fear that what
> I have written will not be universally accepted, at least at first!
>
> Best regards
>
> Horace
>
>
> =============================================================================================================
>
>
>
> Asim Roy
>
> Professor, Information Systems
>
> Arizona State University
>
> Lifeboat Foundation Bios: Professor Asim Roy
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/lifeboat.com/ex/bios.asim.roy__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!NHg1P4byXZZmMFLMgr8A4dQNxSlqyvsqWef4wrPXtCXR0f0bo0eMm-rIF8G6ZV0$>
>
> Asim Roy | iSearch (asu.edu) <https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/9973>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Connectionists <connectionists-bounces at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu> *On
> Behalf Of *Gary Marcus
> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 19, 2026 11:23 AM
> *To:* Stephen José Hanson <jose at rubic.rutgers.edu>
> *Cc:* director at inc.ucsd.edu; connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu
> *Subject:* Re: Connectionists: FW: AI at 50 videos...
>
>
>
> yep: neural networks ascended, pushed symbols out of the way, and then
> symbols came back relabeled as harnesses, loops code interpreters, and
> tools.
>
>
>
> neurosymbolic AI, the hybrid of the two approaches, clearly beat either of
> the two alternatives on their own.
>
>
>
> claude code, biggest recent advance, shows that pretty clearly, when you
> look under the hood.
>
>
>
> gary
>
>
>
> On Aug 19, 2026, at 10:16 AM, Stephen José Hanson <jose at rubic.rutgers.edu>
> wrote:
>
> 
>
> Yes, historically this was an important meeting --and indeed the term AI
> was coined by John McCarthy who with several others put together the 1955
> meeting;  McCarthy also invented LISP after this meeting.   Part of the AI
> meeting at DM was political. McCarthy deliberately chose "Artificial
> Intelligence" partly to distance the new effort from Wiener's cybernetics
> and the neural network tradition. Which was thematic in the MACY meetings..
> which ended in 1953--2 years before the "AI" meeting.  McCarthy wanted to
> stake out a separate field with a symbolic/logical emphasis (in contrast
> to McCulloch and Pitts). So the naming wasn't just descriptive; it was a
> bit of a territorial move that arguably sidelined neural networks for
> decades until the connectionist revival in the 1980s (sorry Juergen).  And
> the more recent revolution associated with DL and LLMs more specifically.
> In the 1970s, this fueled the long term debate in Cognitive Science on
> Symbols/Rules vs Vectors/NN.
>
> Well at least we know how that turned out.
>
> Stephen
>
>
>
> On 8/17/26 13:30, Terry Sejnowski wrote:
>
> Jean-Marc -
>
> I was there and gave a talk, the only one on neural networks.  I learned a
> lot from the other speakers.
>
> I just listened to the questions at the end of my talk.  I pretty much
> predicted what was going to happen in AI and thought it would take 50
> years.  I was wrong, it took less than 20 years.
>
> One of the questions at the end was about intelligent aliens who appear
> and don't have human brains.
> This was a set piece in my recent book on ChatGPT and the Future of AI,
> where ChatGPT is the alien.
>
> I gave my version of that meeting in my first book on the Deep Learning
> Revolution.  Every talk that reported progress did so because they had
> enough data to analyze, including Gene Charniak who was trying to parse
> sentences and Takeo Kanade working on computer vision (These two talks are
> not included in the list).  At the end Marvin Minsky accused them for just
> working on applications, not real AI.
>
> Terry
>
> ------
>
> On 8/17/2026 9:18 AM, Fellous, Jean-Marc wrote:
>
> In case you did not see this: Some amazing lectures and (now historical)
> perspectives… the most interesting parts are when they tried and predicted
> the future of AI!
>
>
>
> *From:* Connectionists <connectionists-bounces at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu>
> <connectionists-bounces at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu> *On Behalf Of *George
> Cybenko
> *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2026 6:00 AM
> *To:* connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu
> *Subject:* Connectionists: AI at 50 videos...
>
>
>
> In 2006, we held a 50th anniversary conference at Dartmouth to commemorate
>
> the historic 1956 meeting that coined the term "artificial intelligence."
> At that time,
>
> five of the surviving original participants attended.  Today they are all
> gone.
>
>
>
> I just recently posted videos of the talks from the AI at 50 meeting at
>
>
>
> https://sites.dartmouth.edu/cybenko/dartmouth-ai50-videos/
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/sites.dartmouth.edu/cybenko/dartmouth-ai50-videos/__;!!Mih3wA!HX5M154b9l4fIHZdxakK00FZ4H1IPqVHrV_pC-lh-4XwoZ6CvDp7SyXZ-ObDk5oWYIct3ux47KDlf3KvyIoMq7VLCwxY0JhC$>
>
>
>
> INobody foresaw what is happening in AI today and in fact,
>
> there were several digs against neural networks etc.
>
>
>
> Enjoy!
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> George Cybenko
>
> --
>
> George Cybenko, Dorothy and Walter Gramm Professor of Engineering
>
> Dartmouth College, 8000 Cummings Hall, Hanover NH 03755 USA
>
>
>
> email:          gvc at dartmouth.edu
>
> FAX:            603 646-9024
>
> Cell:           603 369-1133
>
> Assistant:      Ellen Wirta, 603 646-9672, Ellen.K.Wirta at Dartmouth.edu
>
>
>
> --
>
> <signature.jpg>
>
>
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