John Ball

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Articles

Evolution needs brain science

Dec 9, 2024 | medium.com | John Ball

John Ball·FollowPublished inPat Inc·5 min read·--The father of evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin. How did human capability evolve and where did language come from? Photo by Doina Gavrilov on UnsplashOne of the big unsolved problems of science is how our language evolved and how the brain works. In the Tom Wolfe book, Kingdom of Speech, explaining the evolution of language was discussed on p.3–5.
The Unexpected Brain Science Model

Dec 9, 2024 | medium.com | John Ball

John Ball·FollowPublished inPat Inc·10 min read·--Is this a picture of 7 people doing a jump, or one person moving through time? Our brain easily recognizes both since the image is the building block of a brain — either a set or a sequence. Photo by Jeffrey Brandjes on UnsplashLast time we looked at the model of a brain as the organ of computation explained by famous cognitive scientist, Steven Pinker.
Brain models need brain science

Dec 9, 2024 | medium.com | John Ball

John Ball·FollowPublished inPat Inc·5 min read·--The scientific method is needed to follow puzzles, like how our brain works, towards a working model. Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on UnsplashThe model of a brain as a processor doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. People who use that model often qualify it by saying it isn’t like a computer with a disk and memory, but it is still computational.
Meaning comes from brain science

Dec 2, 2024 | medium.com | John Ball

John Ball·FollowPublished inPat Inc·14 min read·--Beautiful, stark mountains are a good analogy for missing what is lacking. Life without courage is like AI without meaning. Photo by Simon Berger on UnsplashToday’s newsletter is somewhat lengthy and complex, but I was asked about meaning and that’s not the most trivial question! So let’s get started. The examples below are good, high-level explanations. It may be easier to review them first before reading my text description.
Eliminating risk in AI

Nov 28, 2024 | john-at-pat.medium.com | John Ball

John Ball·Follow6 min read·--We keep ignoring warning signs when technology is not ready for prime time use. What is the safest way to develop AI? Photo by Micaela Parente on UnsplashDriverless cars offer “glamour.” But as John Pierce of Bell Labs wrote in 1969 when discussing speech recognition, “To sell suckers, one uses deceit and offers glamour.” I repeated his words in my 2015 article on the lack of innovation on speech recognition.
AI: the science of failed predictions

Nov 28, 2024 | medium.com | John Ball

John Ball·FollowPublished inPat Inc·4 min read·--You can’t know success without the trial and error that can involve many failures. We build on our failures in science. Photo by MJH SHIKDER on UnsplashBehind every scientific discovery is a vast team of amazing people who delivered scientific discoveries. In my field, cognitive science, I stand on the shoulders of greats like Alan Mathison Turing, George Armitage Miller, Robert D. Van Valin, Jr., and my ancestor Michael Faraday.
The Final Frontier in Science

Nov 20, 2024 | medium.com | John Ball

John Ball·FollowPublished inPat Inc·5 min read·--Formal science is scary, like a ghost. Used for AI, it is ineffective. Image © John BallAI has hardly progressed since the invention of computers. Since the 1950s we have dreamed of the computer revolution bringing in robots (“danger, danger, Will Robinson!” from the 1960s TV series “Lost in Space”) and talking machines like in Star Trek (Computer? “Working”).
The Turing Test

Nov 4, 2024 | medium.com | John Ball

John Ball·FollowPublished inPat Inc·8 min read·--Figure 1: Alan Turing’s famous test, using language to check understanding of a visual topic with chess. I’m black with my king on K1 and no other pieces. Your king is on K6 and you have a rook on R1. What do you do?
Thinking about a Thought Experiment

Oct 8, 2024 | medium.com | John Ball

John Ball·FollowPublished inPat Inc·5 min read·--The Chinese Room Argument is a little like language translation. If it can be done accurately, it does NOT mean the system understands what it is doing. Image: Adobe Stock. American philosopher, John Searle, published a thought experiment about the difference between the appearance of understanding and actual understanding — the so-called Chinese Room Argument. It was made a long time ago in the 1980s.
LLMs missing Language

Aug 23, 2024 | medium.com | John Ball

‘words’ are not just symbols, or vectors. It’s meaning in context. Large language models promised much a couple of years ago, but their limitations are holding them back from the creation of that killer app. Research from as early as the 1860s by Charles S. Peirce, dubbed the ‘American Aristotle’, provides clarity on these limitations with his theory of Semiotics. LLMs treat (or work on) language as only ‘form’.