CSC421 Intro to AI - Unit 33 -
Neural Networks
"Once upon a time two daughter sciences were born to the new science of
cybernetics. One sister was natural, with features inherited from the
study of the brain, from the way nature does things. The other was
artificial, related from the beginning to the use of computers. Each of
the sister sciences tried to build models of intelligence, but from
very different materials. The natural sister built models (called
neural networks) out of mathematically purified neurones. The
artificial sister built her models out of computer programs.
In their first bloom of youth the two were equally successful and
equally pursued by suitors from other fields of knowledge. They got on
very well together. Their relationship changed in the early sixties
when a new monarch appeared, one with the largest coffers ever seen in
the kingdom of the sciences: Lord DARPA, the Defense Department's
Advanced Research Projects Agency. The artificial sister grew jealous
and was determined to keep for herself the access to Lord DARPA's
research funds. The natural sister would have to be slain.
The bloody work was done by two staunch followers of the artificial
sister, Marvin Minksy and Seymour Papert, cast in the role of the
huntsmen sent to slay Snow White and bring back her heart as proof of
the deed. Their weapon was not the dagger but the mightier pen, from
which came a book - Perceptrons - purporting to prove that
neural nets could never fill their promise of building models of mind: only
computer programs could do this. Victory seemed assured for the
artificial sister. And indeed, for the next decade all the rewards of
the kingdom came to her progeny, of which the family of expert systems
did best in fame and fortune.
But Snow White was not dead. What Minsky and Papert has shown the world
as proof was not the heart of the princess; it was the heart of a pig."
-Seymour Papert, 1988
Unit 33: Slides
Workplan
- Read AIMA Chapter sections 20.5
- Read AIMA Chapter sections 20.5, 20.6
- Do or at least think about exercises 20.15, 20.16
-
Thinking about graduate school
- Read AIMA Chapter 20.5, 20.6
- Do or at least think about exercises 20.15, 20.16, 20.17, 20.18
EXTRAS
Suggested book:
AI movie:
Music played before lecture: