Norvig vs. Chomsky and the Fight for the Future of AI

PS: Language acquisition starts before birth, and continues 24/7 after that until we 'learn' it.

Here's a summary of Chomsky's career in layman's terms: As everyone knows, Chomsky first came to prominence with his critique of Skinner (who, as everyone also knows, was a total psycho). He pretty much created linguistics as we know it (at least in the US, there were some numbskulls in Europe who still doubted the new order), starting from the main thesis of linguistic universals, which can be summarized as the fact that all humans possess the same language faculty, i.e. the wide range of linguistics differences between, say, English and Mandarin are just on the surface. This was a welcome relief against the Sapir-Whorf mumbo-jumbo which held that Eskimos had hundreds of words of snow and language constrained how we think. Chomsky has also been very active in politics (he's actually much better known to the general world by his political books), pointing out the evils especially of the American brand of capitalism (is there any other kind?) and its corrosive influence on the world, e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. He also points out errors in certain approaches in Economics, e.g. see http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#Capitalism, without holding a degree in the field, but everybody does that.

Chomsky's greatly damaging influence to linguistics is due to the fact that his speculative and simplistic (at least originally) views on how the brain processes and learns language has stifled research in promising fields by decades. The main problem I have with him is that the cause of the shortcomings of his theory seems to be not lack of knowledge (very little was known about cognition in the 60s), which, of course handicaps all pioneers of science, but politics (I detest politically motivated scientific theories). AFAIK, his universalist views were motivated from his political beliefs.

Luckily, starting in the 90s, Chomsky's chokehold on linguistics has slipped somehow. Researchers, such as Leda Cosmides, have ventured into research on linguistic relativity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity). Skinner's theories are making a comeback in academic circles (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/06/the-perf...).

So, what does all this mean for the current debate? I think it's time to retire and the "old guard"! Let us acknowledge their breakthroughs, their contributions, but also their limitations and move on.

The AI case is clearly a point where the theories from linguistics are insufficient for engineering purposes. Watson could not have been built today based off of Chomskian linguistics. Maybe the statistical models will advance the theory of linguistics, maybe not. Either way they will give us useful tools now which is better than elegant tools later.

If you just want a compelling argument: Biology is a vary important component in the creation and evolution of language, because the fine motor control required to say "linguistic" vs "mommy" or "stop" has a lot to do with how languages are learned and evolve. As baby's practice how to say thing babble converts to simple words but in doing so there are pattern as to which sounds are easier to produce and therefore enable them to probe their environment by reproducing. This paralls the evolution of language where the most important and simplist ideas where the first to be communicated and therefore take up the 'root' address space in the language with more complex words and ideas like 'chemist' being tacked on over time.

PS: Sure, it sounds great. But how many assumptions am I stringing together in just those few sentences.

Well, I do. Being able to understand something from first principle is very different than being able to model it and gain an approximation of it.

One might point out that this debate crops up in a different form in developer circles, but reframed as "Learn assembly & cs theory vs. use IDE & ignore assembly and theory".