Over the years, AI has undergone a transformation from its original aim of producing an ‘intelligent’ machine to that of producing pragmatic solutions of problems of the market place. In doing so, AI has made a significant contribution to the debate on whether the computer is an instrument or an interlocutor. This paper discusses issues of problem solving and creativity underlying this transformation, and attempts to clarify the distinction between theresolutive intelligence andproblematic intelligence. It points out that the advance of (...) ‘intelligent’ technology, with its failure to make a clear distinction betweenresolutive andcreative intelligence, could contribute to the further cultural marginalisation of human activities not connected with production. A further danger is that AI products may suffer a further loss of social reputation and prestige for those activities for which it is not possible to build artificial devices. (shrink)

Usually, the shape of the future is seen as the result of a cultural flow that, according to some privileged cultural variable, like technology, goes undisturbed towards its own outcome. This is a quite naive attitude that has been very rarely successful. Both conventional technology and technology of the artificial show that, within culture, ‘demons’ are always active trying to exploit or even bypass standards in order to give birth to unexpected novelties. This is true within the pure technology area (...) and even more in its artistic extensions. Therefore, no deterministic process is going on but, rather, a permanent remixing of chances that makes any prophecy impossible. (shrink)

SAGGI DI VITTORIO MARCHIS, UMBERTO BOTTAZZINI, FABIO TOSCANO, MASSIMO NEGROTTI, GIUSEPPE O. LONGO, STEFANO A. E. LEONI, ALBERTO CASADEI, SILVANO TAGLIAGAMBE.

The contribution by Hubert L. Dreyfus to the debate on the feasibility of AI projects has been surely of great relevance because of his pointing out specific limits of the machine as compared to the human mind. His critics, along with the actual difficulties encountered in the advance of a pure symbolic AI, induced a wide discussion that in some measure stimulated other ways to follow for reproducing human abilities. Nevertheless, a curious fact characterizes the history of AI regarding the (...) problems raised, among the many, by Dreyfus. While in the first era the main concern by the opponents was to certify the limited power of computers as compared to humans, it seems that today the main concern is exactly the opposite, namely the growing and threatening power of AI devices, both software and hardware based, such as robots. Maybe the reason of that has been, and is today too, the imbalance assigned to the discussion, on the one side, of what human faculties are and work, and, on the other, on what the artificial is and can work. Designing the artificial, in every field, means to give birth to devices that consist of a sort of overlapping of nature and technology, and, therefore, they deserve to be named naturoids. This implies that, to understand them, we need to study their genuine ‘artificial nature’ in general terms, bringing further what H. A. Simon called the ‘science of the artificial’. (shrink)

Since the work by Herbert Simon, no particular attention has been paid to the distinction between conventional technology and technology directed at the reproduction of natural instances. Nevertheless, if we had a general knowledge of the methodological aspects that any attempt to reproduce natural objects or processes unavoidably requires, then we would understand why, as a rule, no artificial device can ‘converge’ to its natural counterpart and why, on the contrary, the more it advances, the further away it goes from (...) it. As a result, our efforts should be oriented to deeply investigate the artificial as it were a truly new ‘nature’ in itself. (shrink)

Technological imagination and actual technological achievements have always been two very different things. Sudden and unpredictable events always seem to intervene between our visions regarding possible futures and the subsequent concrete realizations. Thus, our ideas and projects are continually being redirected. In the field of naturoids—that is, artificial systems designed to simulate certain features of natural ones—the above-mentioned tendency is particularly frequent and illuminating, giving all prophecies a flavor of fiction rather than of reliable technological forecast. The dream of reproducing (...) complete natural systems—man included—by means of technological strategies clashes with the “nature” of artificial objects and also with that of natural exemplars. The only certainty is that the future will exhibit growing rates of variety and heterogeneity, and we cannot know, from our present standpoint, what this will imply for our species, or, at least, for our cultures. (shrink)

There is a great distance between two pairs of concepts that are consistent in their own fields; namely, information/control and knowledge/decision. Although contemporary techno-sciences and common sense tend to neglect this distance, its intrinsic implications sometimes make it difficult to understand what is going on in our cultural events and developments. In particular, the abuse of the concepts of knowledge and decision makes it impossible to discriminate between the various levels of systems, both natural and naturoid, which surround us. In (...) fact, the majority of so-called intelligent systems are mere information and control processors, rather than systems that are capable of generating knowledge and decision. The diffusion of such a misunderstanding may cause, in turn, the reduction of man to a mere information system based on established and discoverable rules, thereby neglecting his ability, albeit rarely exercised, to override information and control in order to discover or to set up something new. (shrink)