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From: ba672@lafn.org (Arthur T. Murray)
Subject: Re: AI Top-down, Robotics Bottom-up (rant)
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Reply-To: ba672@lafn.org (Arthur T. Murray)
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Date: Wed, 25 Dec 1996 14:36:27 GMT
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Edward R. Green <erg@panix.com> in sci.psychology.theory
wrote some brilliant comments (q.v. ibid. or via DejaNews):

> Arthur T. Murray <uj797@freenet.Victoria.BC.CA> wrote:
>> In a previous article, cman@plantaganet.com (cman) says:  [...]
>>> I am a proponent of 'weak AI', in the sense that I believe only a
>>> bottom-up evolutionary approach will create true machine sentience.
>>
>> Imagine a Corps of Army Engineers who are eager to build a bridge
>> but who must first toss a grappling hook until it stretches taut.
>>
>> In similar fashion, mindmakers find a basic skeletal structure of
>> the brain-mind and display it on the Internet so that a bottom-up
>> process can occur of many independent AI toilers fleshing out the
>> initial framework, the overview created by Chomskyan linguistics:

> Excuse me for intruding my worthless opinions,  but... [...]

> I guess you could still call evolution a top down approach,
> since differential survival is still a top level requirement
> by which all things are measured.  [...]

Top-down in the Mentifex phenomenon which lo! infiltrates the Web
means that here is at long last a programmable and embodiable AI.

> (Most of this thread was already gone from my server,  so I
> apologize if any of this drivel is repetitious).

Au contraire, Monsieur Edward R. Green, I (A.T. Murray) apologize
for misleading you by importing cman's comp.ai.philosophy thread.

In other words, welcome to the revolution: the Mentifex theory of
mind for AI and neuroscience is top-down in the blatant, strident
sense that we have reverse-engineered the black box of the brain:

  /^^^^^^^^^^^\ Top-down Overview; Details on WWW /^^^^^^^^^^^\
 /visual memory\           ________   semantic   /  auditory   \
|      /--------|-------\ / syntax \  memory    |episodic memory|
|      |  recog-|nition | \________/<-----------|-------------\ |
|   ___|___     |       |    |flush-vector      |    _______  | |
|  /image  \    |    ___V____V___  word-fetch   |   /stored \ | |
| / percept \<--|-->/ conceptual \--------------|->/ phonemes\| |
| \ engrams /   |   \ mini-grids / for thinking |  \ of words/  |
|  \_______/    |    \__________/  in language  |   \_______/   |

http://www.newciv.org/Mentifex/ run periodic Mentifex Web search.
http://www.complex.com.pl/~venom/science.html details of diagram.
