Our Grey Matter as The RM [updates]

Some times I find the experts off in the weeds. Kind of like The Manchurian President does toward any area of endeavor. By now, if you're not living under a rock, you've heard of AI. Self driving cars. Individualized innterTubes adverts. And so on. Exactly what AI is, isn't clearly defined. By coincidence, a NYT crossword blogger of all folks, generated a very off topic discussion of 'what is intelligence, anyway' a few days ago.

So, today the regular NYT prints this profile. Here's where I go off the rails. Hawkins asserts that it's necessary to figure out exactly how the human brain works in order to make AI. As any discussion/argument over the issue of defining 'intelligence' tells us, humans can't even decide where accumulated knowledge ends and intelligence begins. Which is to say: AI has no need to work the same way as the human brain, only be able to solve problems correctly. Just as there are, at least, four distinct ways to store 'structured' data, there's more than one way to skin the problem solving cat.

That said, here's an intriguing quote:

As Mr. Hawkins looked at that cup, he decided that cortical columns did not just capture sensations. They captured the location of those sensations. They captured the world in three dimensions rather than two. Everything was seen in relation to what was around it.

Does three dimensional mean 3NF?? Well, not necessarily, but you get the idea.

Once again, a dude has figured out that the world isn't flat or hierarchical, it's relational. BooYah!! And it gets better:

"When the brain builds a model of the world, everything has a location relative to everything else," Mr. Hawkins said. "That is how it understands everything."

So, the moral of the story: intelligence is just a RDBMS made out of little grey cells. Now, should it be built on locking transactions, or MVCC? I can live with either.

[updates]
Well, that didn't take long. The NYT has an additional section today in the dead trees version (on-line is a bit fractured); subject being AI. Who knew? Recommended. If only because one of the interviewees has this to say:

What remains the biggest misconception about A.I.?
People confuse intelligence with consciousness; they expect A.I. to have consciousness, which is a total mistake. Intelligence is the ability to solve problems; consciousness is the ability to feel things -- pain, hate, love, pleasure.

Sound a bit familiar?

And this bit of discomfort:

International Business Machines Corp.'s Watson Health head, Deborah DiSanzo, is leaving her role, Stat News reported on Friday. The high-profile departure, which a company spokesperson confirmed to Stat, comes as the famed computer system's usefulness in health care, including in treating cancer, has been criticized as overhyped, including in reports by Stat News and The Wall Street Journal.

Oops.