Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-31T23:24:09.401Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Responsibility and Decision Making in the Era of Neural Networks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2010

Ellen Frankel Paul
Affiliation:
Bowling Green State University, Ohio
Fred D. Miller, Jr
Affiliation:
Bowling Green State University, Ohio
Jeffrey Paul
Affiliation:
Bowling Green State University, Ohio
Get access

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Many of the mathematicians and scientists who guided the development of digital computers in the late 1940s, such as Alan Turing and John von Neumann, saw these new devices not just as tools for calculation but as devices that might employ the same principles as are exhibited in rational human thought. Thus, a subfield of what came to be called computer science assumed the label artificial intelligence (AI). The idea of building artificial systems which could exhibit intelligent behavior comparable to that of humans (which could, e.g., recognize objects, solve problems, formulate and implement plans, etc.) was a heady prospect, and the claims made on behalf of AI during the 1950s and 1960s were impossibly ambitious (e.g., having a computer capture the world chess championship within a decade). Despite some theoretical and applied successes within the field, serious problems soon became evident (of which the most notorious is the frame problem, which involves the difficulty in determining which information about the environment must be changed and which must be kept constant in the face of new information). Instead of fulfilling the goal of quickly producing artificial intelligent agents which could compete with or outperform human beings, by the 1970s and 1980s AI had settled into a pattern of slower but real progress in modeling or simulating aspects of human intelligence. (Examples of the advances made during this period were the development of higher-level structures for encoding information, such as frames or scripts, which were superior to simple propositional encodings in supporting reasoning or the understanding of natural [as opposed to computer or other artificial] language texts, and the development of procedures for storing information about previously encountered cases and invoking these cases in solving new problems.)

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×