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by James Patrick Hogan
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Reviews Amazon.com Will a computer ever come up with a really good joke? If it does, will we still call it a computer? Questions like this have been bugging us ever since we adapted machines to mental as well as physical labor. After all, if they can outrun us and outlift us, why shouldn't they be able to outthink us? Ask Garry Kasparov, whose misfortune it was to be the first international chess champion defeated by a computer. Questions like these are thoroughly explored, though never answered, in Mind Matters. Author James P. Hogan certainly knows his material--he was involved in the computer industry almost from its inception in the early 1960s. He knows the nuts and bolts (or vacuum tubes and printed circuits) of artificial intelligence and, better yet, tells a riveting story about its history while keeping an eye on its near future. His vivid portrayals of Marvin Minsky, Alan Newell, and Alan Turing keep the reader hooked, and his lucid, sometimes brilliant, explanations of the science and engineering behind each advance are simple, creative, and dead-on accurate. Proponents of artificial intelligence have always had difficulty convincing their opponents of the field's legitimacy. If they devise a machine able to write as compelling a story as Mind Matters, they may just rest their case. --Rob Lightner Amazon.com James Hogan starts his saga with a quick overview of intelligent machines in fiction and the popular imagination. Some are visions of ideal helpers, others are monsters run amuck. It doesn't take long before he dives beneath the imaginary scenarios to start exploring the questions of what we mean by "thinking" in the first place and how it actually relates to machines. His tour starts in the Middle Ages, when Roman numerals made the very act of simple calculation too much bother even for leading mathematicians. From there Hogan leads his reader through developments in math and philosophy that gave us tools to compute and to think about thinking. He covers landmarks in epistemology, mind-body dualism, mathematics, mechanics, and logic, all in clear, straightforward steps. He then moves to mechanical computation, looking at machines that have mimicked humanity in various ways to create some illusion of intelligence, sometimes to the terror of those they were meant to entertain. Hogan relates his saga in short, easily digestible, but vividly clear segments, and his style is marked by an enjoyable, dry wit. The first chapter, for example, which deals with game-playing machines, features the playful title "Occam's Chainsaw." The gradual buildup pays off well in the later chapters. As Hogan shows how increasingly elaborate programs and ever-greater quantities of computer memory enable computers to mimic the appearance of thought more closely, the reader can see just what is happening in AI and what is not. This leads to a greater appreciation of the issues when Hogan addresses the quest for machine learning and, more mind-boggling yet, the quest for machine common sense. We are still a long way, he demonstrates, from a machine that can understand what it is not directly told, as illustrated in this famous interaction among two humans. Him: I'm leaving you. Her: [Pauses] Who is she? Hogan explores the developments needed to move machines toward that level of understanding and gives ample attention both to those who think it's merely a matter of time and those who think it is too much to expect from any mechanical device, no matter how sophisticated. Providing an overview of the quest for machine thought from the earliest days of mechanical illusion to the tremendous achievement that future generations may see, Mind Matters is praiseworthy for both its comprehensiveness and comprehensibility. --Elizabeth Lewis
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