Brainmakers: How scientists are moving beyond computers to create a rival to the human brain

An illuminating, lucid account of scientific work on artificial intelligence explores the groundbreaking research being done in robotics and neuroscience, showing how thinking machines may surpass the human brain's powers. 30,000 first printing. Tour.

Freelance science writer Freedman's compelling state-of-the-art report on the quest to build human-like thinking machines explores how the field of artificial intelligence is being reinvigorated through AI researchers' interface with neuroscience, biology and robotics. At MIT, Attila, a six-legged robot, crawls around, learning new skills by interacting with its environment. In Japan, scientists are making movies of the neuron-to-neuron flow of signals inside the brains of live rats; their ultimate goal is a "wiring diagram" illustrating how the human brain works. At UCLA, computer scientists have designed a "robot farm" where robots will "mate" by merging their programs; an occasional mutation will be added to imitate biological evolution. Even more science fiction-like are biophysicists' and AI experts' efforts to harness the self-organizing and memory capabilities of biomolecules (e.g., bacterial protein or RNA) which may one day replace transistors on microchips or even serve as the basis for "biomolecular computers."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A lively, clear, and comprehensive survey of who's who and what they're up to in the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI to cognoscenti) from science journalist Freedman. The term ``artificial intelligence'' calls up visions of the advanced computers and human-like robots familiar from hundreds of science fiction movies. The state of the art in AI today is probably best symbolized by Rodney Brooks' robot Attila, a six- inch metal ``cockroach'' scrambling over and around obstacles in the MIT AI labs founded by Marvin Minsky some 30 years ago. Not that the field has stagnated; in fact, the software-oriented approaches explored by Minsky and his fellow pioneers (John McCarthy, Seymour Papert) are considered somewhat old-hat by today's AI researchers, who have branched out into dozens of new directions. Japanese teams, with a mandate to develop a ``sixth generation'' computer, are exploring how living neurons actually transmit information, hoping to build up a detailed ``wiring diagram'' of the human brain. At UCLA, Chuck Taylor and David Jefferson are following an evolutionary strategy: creating computer programs with small random variations, then choosing the most successful in each batch as the ``parents'' for a new generation, in imitation of biological natural selection. Even the ``neural network'' approach to AI, which mechanically emulates the pattern recognition capabilities of the human brain (and which was temporarily discredited by Minsky and Papert in a 1969 critique), has been revived with some success at Stanford and Caltech. All these researchers have made interesting progress; Freedman lucidly summarizes the methods and results of their investigations, as well as the criticisms of such skeptics as John Searle and Roger Penrose. While much remains to be done to match even the more conservative prophecies of AI pioneers such as Minsky, the accomplishments to date, are often fascinating and shed light not only on the future of computers, but on the nature of intelligence itself. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

If you think supercomputers like Hal 9000, star of 2001, are inevitable, Freedman may surprise you. For after more than 30 years of trying to create an electronic brain that matches our glob of gray matter, he discloses, scientists and engineers readily admit they are still far from any such goal. Lest you start thinking the artificial intelligence field is totally barren, Freedman shows what's presently in it--computers ranging from some that can think and do logic but not much else to others that can almost sing and dance but don't have the sense to come in out of the rain. The scientific movers and shakers have come to a dead end in trying to make computer brains that look and act like R2D2 and instead are looking at how the brain evolved. Ironically, the lowly cockroach and other bugs may provide the inspiration for actually building a brain. Some of the newest developments are downright startling, allowing Freedman to assert that the next decade or so may see "thinking" computers that may make Hal 9000 seem outmoded in the real year 2001. Jon Kartman