# Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong



## Kilgore Trout (Jun 25, 2010)

> *I want to start with a very basic question. At the beginning of AI, people were extremely optimistic about the field's progress, but it hasn't turned out that way. Why has it been so difficult? If you ask neuroscientists why understanding the brain is so difficult, they give you very intellectually unsatisfying answers, like that the brain has billions of cells, and we can't record from all of them, and so on.*
> 
> *Chomsky: *There's something to that. If you take a look at the progress of science, the sciences are kind of a continuum, but they're broken up into fields. The greatest progress is in the sciences that study the simplest systems. So take, say physics -- greatest progress there. But one of the reasons is that the physicists have an advantage that no other branch of sciences has. If something gets too complicated, they hand it to someone else.
> 
> ...


Read more here.


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## FlaviaGemina (May 3, 2012)

Boring, can't be bothered to read it. It has been argued - in my view, plausibly - that Chomsky is a moron.

Skinner: humans are like animals because both of them learn by conditioning
Chomsky: Bohooo, how offensive, humans are so much more amazing than animals, because actually... humans are like .... computers!!! (and some animals are like computers too and I'll quote that as evidence because it suits me, but I'll disregard conditioning because it doesn't suit me)

LOL, sorry, I'm being silly. Let me know if there's anything interesting in the article that I'm missing out on.


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## RobynC (Jun 10, 2011)

Who's Marr?


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## wuliheron (Sep 5, 2011)

FlaviaGemina said:


> Boring, can't be bothered to read it. It has been argued - in my view, plausibly - that Chomsky is a moron.


LOL, I wouldn't go so far as to say the man is a moron, but he does seem to have fanatical followers who drool at every word he spouts which says a lot about him in my book. That the article is referring to Chomsky's "triumph" over Skinnerian behaviorism is a dead giveaway. The guy is reliving his glory days and making sweeping criticisms of a single alternative approach, mostly with references to an outdated theory, as if it somehow explains why his approach has not produced results. He sounds like an old man bitterly criticizing the fact everyone doesn't agree with him and blaming them for the fact his own ideas haven't produced serious results in decades.

Notably a quick skim of the article shows no references whatsoever to contextualist approaches or that of modern radical behaviorists. These are the theories in direct competition with Chomsky's and the philosophy that has produced the most results in modern times. That's not to say Chomsky did not make important contributions, but using analogies and sweeping criticisms of outdated theories does not justify his own much less explain the lack of progress he has had in many decades.


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## FlaviaGemina (May 3, 2012)

@wuliheron, I mainly know Chomsky from studying Linguistics as part of my degree. Won't go into the details now, because it's just too ridiculous. Anyway, I had to read one of his articles about politics once. I happened to share his opinion, but if I hadn't he'd never have convinced me because all he ever says is "I'm right because I know."

Makes me wonder whether he's a fellow INTJ. *ashamed of my own species*
Some of his words of wisdom sound like those of an introvert gone majorly wrong, e.g. 'language didn't evolve so that people can speak, it was just created as a beautiful self-contained system' (I don't remember the literal quote). 

Also (nothing to do with introversion)... 'if an alien came to earth, they'd think that all the different languages are very similar'. How does he know that? Did his mother have improper conduct with an alien?


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## mcpng (Oct 30, 2012)

ME HAVE LINGUISTICS DEGREE TOO.

and me went from Chomsky talk before...just for the hell of it.
It was fun too...as he was talking about freedom for Palestinians and stuff...and then u got fanatics for him, and in my mind worse the fanatics (yes fanatics) against him - well not sure if they hate him or they just were pro-israel and were protesting his opposite public views.

Chomsky seems dumb.

Heros die hard... 


and trust me i've seen many "heros" and don't take sides.
Saw this guy called Elie Wiesel too...cos the Israel/Palestinian thing was pretty hot then....

another dumb.

Both look politically motivated.

maybe it's me that's dumb


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## AJ2011 (Jun 2, 2011)

@Kilgore Trout 


Enjoyed reading it. Based on first part of the article, I agree with Chomsky. I think that much of science has tended to become an exercise in statistics. In order to generate new information or have significant variations, you need to have a scientific process that is more than just validation or using past information to derive new information, e.g., Bayesian. I remember hearing one prominent neuroscientist lamenting the number of statistical papers in the field based on collecting data.


There is a renewed interest in developing a more physics-based approach to biology, which is very welcome. I wish I was born around these times so that I could focus on biophysics. The past studies have been riddled with clinical/statistical studies instead of thought provoking conjectures on the underlying dynamics/physics. What is required is the inclusion of control theory and physics into biology to eliminate this approximative statistical analysis and replacing it with understanding of the underlying dynamics of the system. Even engineering is falling prey to system identification, when there should be renewed emphasis on physics-based analysis, e.g., fluid dynamics. Many researchers are prone to either conducting physical or numerical experiments, and making associative arguments. Evolutionary progress ... but not revolutionary. As is the normal case, we'll have the physics-based researchers blaze the trail, and the associanist researchers fill in the consequent corollaries.


Both approaches are necessary in the long run. I consider the statistical approach brute force, and the physics-based techniques best for the long run.


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## madhatter (May 30, 2010)

FlaviaGemina said:


> I mainly know Chomsky from studying Linguistics as part of my degree. Won't go into the details now, because it's just too ridiculous. Anyway, I had to read one of his articles about politics once. I happened to share his opinion, but if I hadn't he'd never have convinced me because all he ever says is "I'm right because I know."
> 
> Makes me wonder whether he's a fellow INTJ. *ashamed of my own species*
> Some of his words of wisdom sound like those of an introvert gone majorly wrong, e.g. 'language didn't evolve so that people can speak, it was just created as a beautiful self-contained system' (I don't remember the literal quote).
> ...


Universal Grammar, for the win....NOT! 

When I was getting my Linguistics degree, I had a running joke. Whenever a professor would ask why there was a linguistic rule or whatnot, I would say, "Because Chomsky says so." Let us bow down at the mountain of transformational syntax!


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## Boolean11 (Jun 11, 2012)

FlaviaGemina said:


> Boring, can't be bothered to read it. It has been argued - in my view, plausibly - that Chomsky is a moron.
> 
> Skinner: humans are like animals because both of them learn by conditioning
> Chomsky: Bohooo, how offensive, humans are so much more amazing than animals, because actually... humans are like .... computers!!! (and some animals are like computers too and I'll quote that as evidence because it suits me, but I'll disregard conditioning because it doesn't suit me)
> ...


Chomsky is believes in libertarian communism too apparently "production and consumption" seem to be the same in his worldview.


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## FlaviaGemina (May 3, 2012)

Boolean11 said:


> Chomsky is believes in libertarian communism too apparently "production and consumption" seem to be the same in his worldview.


What is libertarian communism? Or what is it supposed to be?


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## Obsidean (Mar 24, 2010)

I didn't know how many people disliked Chomsky on here; that is so cool.


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## AJ2011 (Jun 2, 2011)

Obsidean said:


> I didn't know how many people disliked Chomsky on here; that is so cool.


I am not a linguist nor am I familiar with Chomsky's history/work, although I have read perhaps a few of his articles in the distant past.

Is there some article out there that you could suggest that provides some fatal argument(s) against his scholarly work?


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## Boolean11 (Jun 11, 2012)

FlaviaGemina said:


> What is libertarian communism? Or what is it supposed to be?


Succinctly put communism minus the "dictatorship" state planning the whole economy. The libertarian part is the absent of government, instead there would be village governing bodies everywhere arising organically, there is no centralized authority since that is "evil" hence the libertarian aspect.


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## FlaviaGemina (May 3, 2012)

Boolean11 said:


> Succinctly put communism minus the "dictatorship" state planning the whole economy. The libertarian part is the absent of government, instead there would be village governing bodies everywhere arising organically, there is no centralized authority since that is "evil" hence the libertarian aspect.


Hum, I like the idea of it, except that would never happen without a (violent) revolution and I doubt that village governments would arise 'organically' without any conflicts.


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## blit (Dec 17, 2010)

Regardless how right Chomsky may be, his reductionist view is simply impractical. He's essentially arguing the Quantum vs Classical debate but for CS. And at least for today, using AI heuristics with statical reasoning instead of discrete reasoning is an excellent example when worse is better. Staticial reasoning won't go away anytime soon because working is much better than not working. Even if it's not the "real" thing.


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## SuburbanLurker (Sep 26, 2010)

Chomsky is highly intelligent has a high IQ and knows how to (and loves to) argue. The problem is that he's often in the wrong, just in a way that you wouldn't know unless you're a leading expert in said field. Which is why I got much pleasure out of reading Peter Norvig's retort to Chomsky's earlier critique of modern AI techniques.


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## AJ2011 (Jun 2, 2011)

SuburbanLurker said:


> Chomsky is highly intelligent has a high IQ and knows how to (and loves to) argue. The problem is that he's often in the wrong, just in a way that you wouldn't know unless you're a leading expert in said field. Which is why I got much pleasure out of reading Peter Norvig's retort to Chomsky's earlier critique of modern AI techniques.


I'm still reading through it, especially the last language models.

From Norvig's perspective, it appears major contention is that: "science is a combination of gathering facts and making theories; neither can progress on its own. I think Chomsky is wrong to push the needle so far towards theory over facts; in the history of science, the laborious accumulation of facts is the dominant mode, not a novelty." So, it's not who is wrong, but a question regarding where the emphasis should be in the future. Am I reading this correctly?


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## AJ2011 (Jun 2, 2011)

Another thread

http://personalitycafe.com/critical-thinking-philosophy/121750-sum-godel-descartes-hume-popper-kuhn.html

seems to touch on the same issue between science being the evolution of inductive logic (e.g., Bayesian) versus new conjectures (and refutations). Seems like you could make a philosophical argument that Chomsky is correct (see the first post by @ThePermiePagan and specifically the 4th idea).


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## wuliheron (Sep 5, 2011)

AJ2011 said:


> Another thread
> 
> http://personalitycafe.com/critical-thinking-philosophy/121750-sum-godel-descartes-hume-popper-kuhn.html
> 
> seems to touch on the same issue between science being the evolution of inductive logic (e.g., Bayesian) versus new conjectures (and refutations). Seems like you could make a philosophical argument that Chomsky is correct (see the first post by @_ThePermiePagan_ and specifically the 4th idea).


Or that he's just a nut case and the evidence shows clearly that contextual approaches are now the dominant alternative suggest a systems science approach is the only reasonable philosophical one in the long run.


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## AJ2011 (Jun 2, 2011)

@Kilgore Trout

Here's a relatively old, yet interesting article on trying to obtaining the underlying model for consciousness, e.g., AI. It's by a CalTech professor that has been looking for the architecture that enables the network of neurons to obtain more than just the individual neuronal states.

http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/koch-tononi-08.pdf

Apparently, there was a symposium last year on the topic (see the following link for videos):

Brains, Minds and Machines | MIT150 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology 150th anniversary

I have yet to view the videos. The range of topics discussed is very interesting.


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