Professor challenges smart machine thinking(2)

Lebiere’s book, “The Atomic Components of Thought” (co-written with John Anderson, also of Carnegie Mellon), presents a unified theory of a cognitive architecture, one that competes with connectionism as a theory of the brain.

What form Roy’s controller takes is still a point of speculation; at the theory’s early stage, the controller is little more than a generic, guiding “ghost in the machine.” Roy’s work is not based on brain imaging scans or laboratory dissections but is more theoretical and logic-based.

“What I did was structurally analyze Connectionist algorithms to prove that they actually use control theoretic notions, even though they deny it,” Roy says. “Plus, I added some neuroscience evidence.”

In the forthcoming article, Roy uses a series of basic analogies that compare brain functions (and well-known algorithms in his field) to more everyday interactions to explain what he sees as inherent flaws in Connectionist thinking.

The Connectionists would argue that the human is not controlling the device but rather is part of a mutual give-and-take dynamic.

While Roy is not a neuroscientist, he highlights findings from other research that support his control theory. Roy says his theory does not suggest that there is a single executive controller in the brain; instead, it suggests that there very well could be “multiple distributed controllers” controlling various subsystems or modules of the brain.

This significant shift in thinking about how the brain works and learns eventually could have an impact on the design of industrial robots. Roy’s new control theory will not revolutionize the thinking behind artificial intelligence overnight. Instead, he says it may be decades before the new philosophy effectively changes the way computers operate.