[ozgung]

> Maybe you can clarify why they are outdated.

The First Edition (1995) of the classic textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russell and Norvig talks about the criticisms of Dreyfus quite extensively.

In the second edition (2003) they conclude: "In sum, many of the issues Dreyfus has focused on-background commonsense knowledge, the qualification problem, uncertainty, learning, compiled forms of decision making, the importance of considering situated agents rather than disembodied inference engines-have by now been incorporated into standard intelligent agent design. In our view, this is evidence of AI's progress, not of its impossibility."

In the 4th edition (2020) Dreyfus reduces to a paragraph and Heidegger is just a reference in a footnote.

[f_klem]

I have that book at home and I'll check as soon as I get back from a trip.

When Dreyfus' book appeared in 1972, it received really harsh criticism from the then AI community. Dreyfus actually comments on that criticism in the revised 1992 edition.

I just don't see how Dreyfus critique of AI has been dealt with in modern AI: the critique is aimed at fundamental issues, not at the technical issues.

It is true that the critique written by Dreyfus is based on GOFAI algorithms from the 60s, but it is also true that if you read the book today, you'll find lots of similar situations and a similar way of thinking about the possibilities of AI, as well as the same underlying assumptions.

And as a side note, outdated means that it does not apply anymore, or that is not relevant anymore. Which is different from 'establishing a dialogue' with the text/author, in a way that 'seems' not to be relevant anymore. If you say that Dreyfus' book is outdated just because the 4th edition of Norvig's text only mentions it in a footnote, you are assuming that Norvig and Russell's opinion are definitive. They might be not.

I have authors like Norvig, Russel, LeCun, Minsky and other in the field in high regard. But they are normally not trained in either modern linguistics nor philosophy. Let alone the rest, large amount of researchers in the field. AI research is a complex field, and maybe (in this we could follow Foucault) not even a science. Doing research in an area of study does not turn it into science.

It is precisely philosophy, and even more contemporary philosophy, the discipline that focuses on how we build knowledge, and how we experience the world. Two really important, almost fundamental, topics that directly contribute to how AI is developed as a field of knowledge.

[f_klem]

I have the third edition, so I can only speak for it. Being the 3rd edition of the book, I assume that it is the 3rd time the text is revised, so I expect the other two editions (1st and 2nd) to adolesce from the same problem, which I state in the following paragraphs.

The mention to Dreyfus in the 3rd edition of Artificial Intelligence, a Modern Approach, by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, is made in 4 different places of the book, referencing four different problems.

The first mention is in page 279, effectively in the bibliographical notes, and it is about something called the 'frame problem'. Dreyfus presents this problem in the 1972 edition of the book, as a problem pertaining 'how to differentiate figure from ground', or 'how to account for what is important and what is not in a specific scenario'. But the solution to the problem that Norvig and Russel cite (Ray Reiter, 1991) is from a paper that _changes the conditions of the problem_, even _change the problem completely_ (by reductionism) to 'how to detect objects that do not change after an action'. They claim the problem solved, but they are actually not addressing Dreyfus criticisms, and misleading the reader to think that the problem is actually solved. The frame problem, by now, is still unsolved (and is one of the most difficult problems to solve).

The second mention is in page 1024, under a section called 'Weak AI: Can machines act intelligently?', and subsection 'The argument from informality'. The section mentions the books What Computers can't do (1972) and What Computers still can't do (1992), as well as Mind over Machine (1986). Unfortunately, this section completely misunderstands the critique of AI that Dreyfus exposes in those books. The whole section is misleading, obfuscating or tergiversing the critique from Dreyfus to fit the purpose of Norvig and Russell (mainly, to show that advances in machine learning and AI can make a solid base for machines that 'act intelligently').

The third mention is in page 1049, and it tries to undermine the first-step fallacy (which is similar to the fallacy of composition). Again, they do it by completely dismissing Dreyfus' critique, not addressing the issue. Then they go on talking about 'rationality' (as explained in chapter 1), but with a trick: only in terms of machines, goal-oriented expectations, computing resources. Dreyfus' critique is about the overall AI enterprise and the search for 'artificial' intelligence, Russell and Norvig discourse in this section first reduce Dreyfus' critique to what they can handle, to their own terms. That is, they evade the issue.

The fourth and final mention, in page 1072, is the bibliographical citation.

Re-reading the non-technical, but more theoretical parts of the book just made me realize how poorly constructed the book is. For example, the definitions given about AI in page 2 are just laughable. Compare with an introductory text on Psychology [0].

[0] https://pressbooks.openeducationalberta.ca/saitintropsycholo...