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

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

#131

Post by meric »

robg wrote: post #24

This is one of those rare moments in intellectual life where being in the room and now seeing the debate develop, it becomes clear that the resulting hype isn't (wasn't) loud enough. This distinction marks the real turning point in AI from abstract, grand claims with highly restrictive evidence toward engineering that simply works. Who cares about the ontology when we can recreate? It's like saying airplanes don't pr…

"It's like saying airplanes don't properly explain flight because they don't replicate how birds do it."

The analogy doesn't hold. We don't want planes to fly like birds, but we may want machines to thinking like humans.

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

#132

Post by no_more_death »

One myth I want to debunk:

Copernicus's theory did NOT do away with epicycles. Search on Google for "copernicus epicycle" and the first article demonstrates my point. The one who did away with epicycles was Kepler. Copernicus believed orbits had to be perfectly circular; Kepler recognized that the data fit better into an elliptical model.

It's not 100% clear whether the author believed the "myth," but hopefully I can set some people straight in this forum.

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

#133

Post by gbog »

mcguire wrote: post #99
knowtheory wrote: post #27

It's a little bit frustrating to read a rehash of an argument that was cutting edge maybe back in the late 90s, especially one that is so poorly written, and framed as a battle between two intellectuals. Chomsky's past his heyday. He has been seminal in his field, but he's no longer doing research which pushes at the boundaries of our understanding of language, how to model it, or what the fundamental nature of langu…

Non-Chomskian linguists? I was under the impression that, post-Chomsky, linguistics was defined as Chomskian; everyone else had left the field for whatever related discipline most closely matched what they wanted to do.

> linguistics was defined as Chomskian

IOPOTW (In Other Parts Of The World) Chomsky may have a much lower relative influence on linguistics. For instance in France, you have Ferdinand de Saussure and André Martinet. I read a bit of the later, and it seem to me more solid on some grounds than Chomsky, because more humble (the first act of reason is to acknowledge its limits).

I'd bet in continental Europe the political Chomsky is deemed more interesting than the linguist.

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

#134

Post by forkandwait »

Jun8 wrote: post #43

OK, let me start with two facts, one objective, one personal: (i) Noam Chomsky is a genius with many contributions to linguistics and computer science (ii) I think his overall influence had been damaging to linguistics. 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 mu…

> ... of Skinner (who, as everyone also knows, was a total psycho)

Not so fast cowboy. Skinner's theories were far more limited than he or his disciples believed (ditto Chomsky and pretty much every psych or social theorist), but the behaviorists added a great deal to psychological understanding.

It is interesting to contrast the soft sciences (for lack of a better term) with the hard sciences and how they relate to their history. Nobody would say "Newton was an utter psycho" because his theories didn't account for thermodynamic behavior, or because his dynamics were proven to be approximate by Einstein, or because in his later years he spent a lot time analyzing word patterns in the bible. Rather, what he said that was true gets incorporated into the textbooks and we move on. Sometimes Skinnerian dynamics apply, and we should use them in those situations, and learn about them, and toss them when not appropriate. Duh.

I am not sure why the soft/social sciences are so dysfunctional in this respect.

In anthropology this is extremely evident, but they are all psychos there...

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/06/the-perf...

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

#135

Post by greendestiny »

neilk wrote: post #123
knowtheory wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you chose Markov chains as your modeling mechanism doesn't mean that there is no statistical modeling method that is capable of developing something passing for what we'd call "meaning". This is the same argument that was used against artificial neural networks. Neural network of type A can't do X, therefore neural networks will never do Y. Language is immensely complex, and real human language involves…

I am not a specialist, but as far as I know, Chomsky's argument here was that the existence of recursion showed that a Markov approach had to be wrong. Surely a similar argument can be made for statistical approaches? There is no way to represent a reference to some other part of the statement in a purely statistical method. If they work they happen to work basically by accident. Just blue-skying here, but it seems t…

You can statistically build a model that has recursion. It's just that such a model cannot be sure it has induced the right grammar - that's what Chomsky's argument was. I think the obvious counter argument is so what? Given any other constraints like parsimony you can certainly reliably induce a grammar.

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

#136

Post by fauigerzigerk »

Jun8 wrote: post #43

OK, let me start with two facts, one objective, one personal: (i) Noam Chomsky is a genius with many contributions to linguistics and computer science (ii) I think his overall influence had been damaging to linguistics. 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 mu…

I think you are wrong about Chomsky's theories being politically motivated. I don't have time right now to look up quotes but many years of debates with intellectuals on the left have made one thing very clear to me: The left hates talk of anything innate, particularly if it is even remotly connected to meaning.

I don't want to dumb this down because there are many different opinions on all sides of the political spectrum, but the left has a tendency to see everything as learned, learnable and socially induced - nurture not nature. Chomsky's theory is seen as a form of biological determinism. There are few things less popular on the left than that.

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

#137

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

Jun8 wrote: post #43

OK, let me start with two facts, one objective, one personal: (i) Noam Chomsky is a genius with many contributions to linguistics and computer science (ii) I think his overall influence had been damaging to linguistics. 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 mu…

No offence (I like most of your post), but BF Skinner was not a psycho. He was an amazing scientist and researcher. You should really read some of his books before you judge him (Beyond Freedom and Dignity is very good, and short). Skinner was totally wrong on language, yes, but he was right on a lot of other things. He essentially invented operant conditioning, which is the basis for slot machines and much of modern gamification. In addition, he's responisble for such signs as "thank you for not smoking" (that was in Beyond Freedom).

To summate, he was an extremely interesting thinker and a fine researcher (and really loved pigeons). His theories were wrong, but all theories tend towards wrong in the limit.

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

#138

Post by 6ren »

It's true that Engineering at times leads Science. But, from a scientific view, what's the point of a model if you can't understand it? After all, we already know how to create intelligence without understanding it.

While it's conceivable that intelligence is too complex for a human to ever understand (e.g. if not amenable to hierarchical decomposition), that would be very sad news for science.

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

#139

Post by yters »

Norvig is only trivially right. Sure, with enough stats you can infer a lot of the structure of all the information we humans have created, and thus replicate the structure, as Google is doing with its suggest service. However, this does not explain how humans created the structure in the first place. Such a form of AI will forever being playing catch up to humans.

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

#140

Post by eyko »

meric wrote: post #131
robg wrote: post #24

This is one of those rare moments in intellectual life where being in the room and now seeing the debate develop, it becomes clear that the resulting hype isn't (wasn't) loud enough. This distinction marks the real turning point in AI from abstract, grand claims with highly restrictive evidence toward engineering that simply works. Who cares about the ontology when we can recreate? It's like saying airplanes don't pr…

"It's like saying airplanes don't properly explain flight because they don't replicate how birds do it." The analogy doesn't hold. We don't want planes to fly like birds, but we may want machines to thinking like humans.

Also, the statistical approach would be to imitate flying creatures until we can fly, rather than understanding aerodynamics in order to create "vessels that float".
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