Chapter 12: AI Today

In this final chapter, we'll look at where research is going for AI today. AI is a classic example of a technology that seemed initially so solvable, and then, on closer examination, so thorny and difficult. The early promises of AI didn't work out, which make predicting its future ambitious at best. This section will provide some of the interesting developments that are changing AI today.

Top Down to Bottom Up

The methods to achieve artificial intelligence can be divided into two broad categories; top down and bottom up. The top-down category is synonymous with traditional symbolic AI where cognition is a high-level concept and is independent of the lower-level details that implement it. The bottom-up category is synonymous with connectionist AI (neural networks); following closely the model of our own mammalian brains . Cognition, from the bottom-up perspective, is hoped to emerge from the operation of many simple elements. Also included in the bottom-up approach are the evolutionary algorithms and artificial life.

Consider our own brains. We have yet to define plausible structures that exist within the brain that yield what we consider intelligence or consciousness. Yet, the firing of millions of neurons somehow provides intelligence at the global level. The simple process of a neuron firing at the micro level gives rise to something much greater at the macro level.

AI began in the top-down camp with only minor amounts of research in connectionism. Research in neural networks was almost halted completely after Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert published the book Perceptrons , but it didn't take long for the research community to realize that the problems identified in the book were easily solved . As it stands now, the bottom-up camp has the edge for the future of AI. An interesting question for AI is whether we can program an AI that mimics human intelligence, or build the basic needs and allow the AI to learn and evolve into human intelligence. The results in both camps show the bottom-up camp moving ahead.