How to build a mind ?....well not quite.
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I am an I.T. specialist by trade, and I found this book to be a very thought-provoking read. The author conveys his ideas by relating numerous ficticious conversations with historical figures down through the ages. He also discusses many of the key considerations that have to be addressed before an artificial brain can become a reality. I didn't agree with a number of his conclusions about how an artificial brain could be created and how it would function, which in my opinion were overly pessimistic. In the last two chapters the author tries to summarise the previous chapters, and while this is the best part of the book, it is also an anti-climax because as the author puts it : "...there is no grand formula, no glittering prize, no startling revelation.". In spite of this, I believe that thinking, learning machines are a real possibility, and we're closer to achieving this goal than perhaps anybody realises. Whether these artificial intelligences live up to people's expectations (especially in the early days) remains to be seen.
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A catching book title but the content is rather dull.
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The book contains some brief technical details that attempts to confuse and mislead the casual reader. Experts in the fields of artificial intelligence, neural networks, or intelligent systems will be fustrated by the inaccuracies or misleading descriptions in this book. To its credit, the book is rather clever in that it attempts to confuse/mislead even the experts in various fields of study. Since, experts in individual fields are rarely experts in many other major fields of study, the author cleverly mixes (misleading or poorly explained) information about neural biology and artificial intelligence together so that experts in either field are confused and easily mislead. Some of the claims made in the book are somewhat far fetched (at best controversial) and not backed up by any solid theory. The catchy title of the book will probably convince some people to buy it but its not one of the best books I have seen.
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