BKARTMND.RVW   970509

"Artificial Minds", Stan Franklin, 1995, 0-262-06178-3, U$30.00
%A   Stan Franklin
%C   55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA   02142-1399
%D   1995
%G   0-262-06178-3
%I   MIT Press
%O   U$30.00 800-356-0343 fax: 617-625-6660 curtin@mit.edu www-mitpress.mit.edu
%P   449
%T   "Artificial Minds"

In the beginning, Franklin promises us a new paradigm for artificial
intelligence (AI).  When he finally gets around to explicating the concept, in
the last chapter, I realized that he had foreshadowed it in the body of the
book--and I didn't recognize it as a world view.  It boils down to seven
assertions made about artificial intelligence.  When stated baldly, my reaction
to the statements is a definite, "Well, maybe," and the proposed paradigm falls
squarely into the behaviorist camp.

Most of the book is a "once over, lightly" look at various aspects of, and
topics related to, artificial intelligence.  We look at the mind-body problem,
animal minds, symbolic AI, the question of whether machines can think,
connectionism (intelligence as a function of a collection of discrete units),
neural networks, evolution and genetic programming, artificial life,
connectionism and contradiction with a given "mind", initiation of action,
perception, memory, representation, and the future.  Some of these chapters are
interesting surveys of research in the field; others are rather muddled
philosophical excursions.  (The muddle is not helped by Franklin's tendency to
start using a term or acronym before it has been defined.)  Specific sections
do not get deeply enough into details to be more than superficial restatements
of truisms, as the pieces on Turing and Godel demonstrate.

We used to, and sometimes still, say that AI was further from reaching its
goals than it was a few decades ago.  While progress has been made (as I write
this, Kasparof and Deep Blue are tied at a win each and two draws, in the
second world cup chess challenge), frustrations remain.  What is certainly true
is that the literature in the field is improving at the same glacial pace.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997   BKARTMND.RVW   970509