MIT to start again with AI research

Artificial Intelligence set to get a reboot from the big brains at MIT.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is looking to re-ignite the development of artificial intelligence (AI) by 'going back and fixing mistakes', something that sounds like it came straight out of a movie.

Today in a report, the MIT news office said that a $5 million project called the Mind Machine Project, or MMP, has been launched with the aim of starting over on research and development that first started 50 years ago. A loose collective of some twenty four experts including professors, researchers, students and postdocs will work together for five years to create new intelligent machines that will live up to the dream of AI.

Having said that, it all sounds a little wooly. Neil Gershenfeld, one of the leaders of MMP, added, "whatever that means. Essentially, we want to rewind to 30 years ago and revisit some ideas that had gotten frozen." He also said that the five year timeline might be constrictive, but added, "We need good challenging projects that force us to bring our program together."

There is much to be done, other members explained. "Considering the outrageous optimism of much of the early hype for AI, it is no wonder that it couldn't deliver. This is an occupational hazard of many new fields," said Daniel Dennett, a professor of philosophy at Tufts University. "The reality is not dazzling, but still impressive, and many applications of AI that were deemed next-to-impossible in the '80s are routine today."

In order to 'fix' AI the team will look at three areas of its development - the mind, memory and the body - and consider how to apply them to artificial intelligence. According to Gershenfeld, research has become stuck in these areas and needs re-igniting. "How do you model thought?" he asked. "What's been missing is an ecology of models, a system that can solve problems in many ways."

"The pieces are very disparate; they're not necessarily built in a compatible way. There's a similar pattern in AI research. There are lots of pieces that work well to solve some particular problem, and people have tried to fit everything into one of these," continued Gershenfeld. "Instead of searching for silver bullets, we're looking at a range of models, trying to integrate them and aggregate them".

The full report is here.

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6 Comments

Metasynaptic Dec 9, 2009 11:26 AM	Dammit. Now John Conner has to send back ANOTHER terminator to prevent the future. Again.
wlayton27 Dec 9, 2009 12:34 PM	Isn't this the same project that Richard M. Stallman was working on back in the 60's? Does this mean that they're gonna crank the ol' ITS machine back up to open the data from the first project? I wants to "hack" into it and make it say stuff when they boot it up. "Wow, it's so human ... they were further along than I thought!"
Mademan Dec 9, 2009 1:13 PM	Well they did say "rewind 30 years", so that would put it in roughly the right time frame.
xBomx Dec 9, 2009 2:51 PM	Seems like a pipe dream, western scientist contemplating the "MIND" and apply theme to A.I. One can have guidance through a spiritual guru but putting it on paper intellectually, equations or even verbally is challenging as it is. Ironically they are trying to grasp the term but fail to understand the self/mind. Another irony is that, the "MIND" is independent and A.I is artificial. If however you can understand the mind/self to a full degree and apply mind mechanics/apparatus successfully to A.I it would be likely that this A.I is no longer an A.I but an independent entity. And to fully understand the mind/self, then you might as well walk on water or organize another humanitarian community, so to speak. But of course stating from the above it is very unlikely that they will comprehend it to a full degree, grasp it and apply to A.I. However it is very likely that they can understand the mind to a certain degree and apply that to A.I. My point is that they will never fully understand and grasp the mind because they are trekking on a material path. Just to make an assertion, individual A.I will be design and manufactured for a specific, individual and independent task, as it always have been.
Ghost_Bear Dec 10, 2009 3:44 AM	Hey xBomx, Here's a little something that'll blow YOUR mind. The mind/brain is tissue, organic tissue which means it's biologically and scientifically measurable. It's tangible. You can crap on all you like about how we exist on a spiritual plane or whatever the shit it is you believe in but at the end of the day, I for one know what I am. I am an animal, a biological entity and my personality and being is only a product of the cells strung about, holding hands and working in unison within my headcase. You're free to disagree but when you break it down, it's science. It's only a matter of time till the brain is completely and fully mapped out and identified before we'll for once and for all actually be able to see and understand how our mind works and thus how we, both as individuals and a group, have come to be and work. From there it's replicable. Boom. "It's that science shit, yo" GB p.s. This is awesome, it'll be really interesting to see what they discover
xBomx Dec 10, 2009 9:39 AM	Not disagreeing, just a correction though, The mind and the brain are two separate thing. You can ask a general western style scientist about the mind and 90% of them will go off topic and discuss about the brain and its neural functions. Briefly, mind and brain are relative, one is an energy "entity" that evolves with the "brain organ" and vice versa. A brief example of the mind in regards to A.I. The ego is receptive and stores what it retrieve's within the brain hence ego arises from external matters derived from the brain. Within a specific conditional environment, a specie will evolve or in this case think alike e.g being nurtured and/or the way it is being treated and/or taught etc. So it seems that this is what the people behind A.I. are trying to achieve. To replicate the brain and applying it to A.I. with regards to the minds of science is indeed interesting. To keep align with the subject, as i have stated before, the mind is not an easy subject to discuss. Conveniently you could google it up to get a better idea of the meaning, but dont mistaken mind for brain.

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