Abstract

CAN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE be achieved? If so, how soon? By what methods? What ideas from current AI research will in the long run be important contributions to a science of cognition? I believe that AI can be achieved, perhaps within our lifetimes, but that we have major scientific and engineering obstacles to hurdle if it is to come about. The methods and perspective of AI have been dramatically skewed by the existence of the common digital computer, sometimes called the von Neumann machine, and ultimately, AI will have to be based on ideas and hardware quite different from what is currently central to it. Memory, for instance, is much more important than its role in AI so far suggests, and search has far less importance than we have given it. Also, because computers lack bodies and life experiences comparable to humans’, intelligent systems will probably be inherently different from humans; I speculate briefly on what such systems might be like.