A new theory changes the thinking behind creating robots and smart machines

Asim Roy, an information systems professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business, was on sabbatical at Stanford University in 1991 when several years of thinking about the operation of the brain and artificial systems inspired him to act. In a message to the leading Connectionist scholars, he threw down the gauntlet, challenging the prevailing school of thought and thereby the very foundations of the technologies behind smart machines and artificial intelligence.

"There was a Connectionist mailing list [online] and I just came flat out and said, 'Hey, all of your theories of brain-like learning don’t make sense,'" said Roy. In order for the Connectionist theories to work, he said, they would require what he labeled "magic."

While claiming a sprinkle of magic may have been acceptable during the height of alchemy, it did not go down easily in 1991. Roy's colleagues around the world did not take kindly to his blunt, confrontational postulating.

Read full story in Knowledge W.P Carey

Asim Roy's paper, Connectionism, controllers and a brain theory, may be downloaded here.