[LINK] SBS: The Age of Big Data

[Jim Birch]

It's interesting that the AI dream from circa 1950 of creating a rational
intelligent conceptualising machine - epitomised by 2001's HAL 9000
computer - has fallen away and we now attempt high level "intelligence"
tasks with neural networks and big data.  This parallels the change from
thinking of the brain as mind - the cogito ergo sum persona - to seeing the
brain as a massively parallel association processor, with consciousness
being the just the tip of that particular iceberg, albeit the fun part.

We don't imagine we can "understand" what a neural network or a multifactor
regression discovers - the result is the result.  Similarly, quoting SF
writer David Zindell: If the brain were so simple we could understand it,
we would be so simple we couldn't.

- Jim


 Jan Whitaker wrote:

> The Age Of Big Data
>