It’s interesting to see this power-struggle between “cybernetics” and “AI” so frankly addressed by Heinz von Foerster.<\/p>\n
From Vienna to California: A journey across
\ndisciplines: An interview with Heinz von Foerster<\/p>\n
Article in Kybernetes \u00b7 January 2005
\nDOI: 10.1108\/03684920510575717<\/p>\n
(…)<\/p>\n
[FG] Indeed, it seems that classical artificial intelligence researchers tend to refrain
\nfrom getting into such paradoxical matters. Seymour Papert once said of Perceptrons\u2014the very
\ninfluential book he wrote with Marvin Minsky\u2014that if their work was so critical of cybernetics
\nand neural nets research it was because there was too much romanticism and too little
\nmathematical rigor in the field. Do you think he was trying to separate AI research from what
\nhe perceived as an overly \u201cphilosophical\u201d pursuit?<\/p>\n
[HvF] I think you touch an important point here; however, I would put it differently. It
\nseems to me that there are different styles of thinking which, in Warren McCulloch, were still
\nthe two sides of the same coin. Let me cite the titles of some of what I would call his
\n\u201cmetaphysical\u201d papers, for instance, \u201cWhat Is A Number That A Man May Know It, And A
\nMan That He May Know A Number?\u201d or \u201cA Logical Calculus Of The Ideas Immanent In
\nNervous Activity\u201d or \u201cThrough The Den Of A Metaphysician\u201d; and then the titles of some
\nembryonic AI papers: \u201cMachines That Think And Want,\u201d \u201cToward Some Circuitry Of Ethical
\nRobots,\u201d \u201cBiological Computers,\u201d \u201cThe Brain As A Computing Machine,\u201d etc., etc.
\n(McCulloch, 1965).<\/p>\n
As you probably guessed, I was touched by Warren\u2019s metaphysics, while others were
\nstimulated by his computer metaphors or, as von Neumann put it, by \u201cWarren\u2019s Turing side,\u201d
\nwith reference to Alan Turing\u2019s invention of the machine that can compute all computable
\nnumbers.<\/p>\n
There were, of course, other separating forces that pulled these two styles apart. One of
\nwhich, I sense, may have been the prevailing funding strategies. If I remember correctly, lucky
\nMarvin Minsky succeeded in getting a ten million dollar grant for an Artificial Intelligence lab
\nas a byproduct of MIT operations. There was almost no other money available for any other
\nstudies which were not AI-ish, afterwards.<\/p>\n
[FG] What year was that, do you remember?
\n[HvF]\u201962, \u201963 something like that.<\/p>\n
[FG] So, there was actually a kind of funding war?
\n[HvF] A tremendous funding war, yes. And that happened because although science is a
\nwonderful thing, there is a public relations side to it. Whether or not you address yourself to it,
\npublic relations are a very important component of scientific activity, and I must confess that as
\na greenhorn in America I did not realize that. I was so happy being allowed to do some research
\nwhich I felt was interesting and important to the people sponsoring it that I thought it was a
\nparadise. I thought you didn\u2019t have to do the politics, and I was so glad to have shed political
\nconcerns. It was only much later that I realized that politics was there, all along.
\n8\/14\/<\/p>\n
Anyway, I think there was a bifurcation of these two fields, cybernetics and Artificial
\nIntelligence, which turned out to be detrimental. Cybernetics was unfortunately interpreted in
\ntoo narrow a way, and I sometimes get the feeling that this was on purpose, to push it away
\nfrom another big branch which became Artificial Intelligence. And Artificial Intelligence was
\npromising so much, at the time; it was absolutely incredible. And if you promise something,
\nthen of course everybody hopes that this promise will be realizable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s interesting to see this power-struggle between “cybernetics” and “AI” so frankly addressed by Heinz von Foerster. From Vienna to California: A journey across disciplines: An interview with Heinz von Foerster Article in Kybernetes \u00b7 January 2005 DOI: 10.1108\/03684920510575717 (…) [FG] Indeed, it seems that classical artificial intelligence researchers tend to refrain from getting into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"yoast_head":"\n