From: Joi Ito Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2013 11:27 AM To: Epstein Jeffrey Subject: Re: MDF Attachments: signature.asc Sorry, not brain. Cog Sci and Al. On Oct 22, 2013, at 07:26 , Joi It rote: > BTW, getting going with Joscha. He's smart. Let me know if you're =nterested in joining the brain threads. > Begin forwarded message: » From: Joscha Bach » Subject: Re: MDF » Date: October 21, 2013 23:56:09 -0400 » To: Joi Ito » Cc: takashi ikegami Ari Gesher Kevin Slavin Martin Nowak reg Borenstein » Hi Takashi, hi An, hi all, » finally I got around to look at Takashi's talks and his 2010 ACM =rticle. The first thing that came to mind was the distinction between =neat" and "scruffy" Al, which might be described as the clash between =olks that wanted to construct Al by adding function after function, vs. =hose that want to take a massively complex system and constrain it =ntil it only does what it is supposed to do. >> » The idea of starting from massive data flows is very natural and =heoretically acknowledged, even it is often practically neglected. =ognition, by and large, is an organism's attempt to massively reduce =omplexity, by compressing, encoding, selectively ignoring, abstracting, =redicting. controlling it. Thus, it seems natural to focus on the =echanisms that handle this complexity reduction, which I think is =xactly what most research in computer vision, machine learning, =lassification, robot control etc. is doing. A lot of the work on =roblem solving and learning within cognitive science even works _only_ =n the highest level of abstraction, i.e. grammatical language, regular =oncept structures, ontologies and soon. >> » If I understand Takashi correctly, he points towards another » =erspective: (please forgive and correct me if I should oversimplify too =uch here) 1. Cognitive systems do not only need to reduce complexity, but also =uild it (for instance, take simple cues or abstract input and use it to =eed a rich,