On this computational biologist Mike Paulin and OOO me agree. We had a nice conversation in Dunedin, New Zealand, in which it emerged that we both thought
—mind is overrated by AI and anti-AI theory and consciousness, whatever it is, is far more default to lifeforms than we think
—mind is extended or in my terms interobjective (see Levi's many posts on this).
So Mike has this fabulous series of pages in which he generates algorithms for walking and other movements—in other words, when I walk across a surface, am I holding a picture in my mind, a representation of myself, walking, or my terrain; or am I just trying not to fall? (There is a correct answer.)
No time to really elaborate, but you need to look up Rodney Brooks. He made great strides in robotic AI (in the early -mid 80s?) when he jettisoned a lot of the symbolic inferential "mind" baggage of 1st generation AI and created insect-like bots that used so-called neural nets to learn their world as they knocked about it. I believe that a creature he called "Gengis" was a break-thru.
ReplyDeleteOh, and there's this fantastic TED video about a (Stanford?) roboticist/biologist building bots the mimic biological movement. Really cool stuff. Alas, I've forgotten the guy's name and have no URL.