Doug Lenat Presented “50 Shades of Understanding: Why the Veneer of Intelligence is Not Enough” at SmartData 2017

Almost everyone who talks about AI, nowadays, means neural net-based machine learning from big data. That fast pattern-finding and -using is a lot like what our right brain hemispheres do.

But we also have a left brain hemisphere, which reasons more slowly, logically, and causally. Human beings’ super-power is harnessing both types of reasoning, and I believe that the most powerful AI solutions in the coming decade will likewise be hybrids of right-brain-like “thinking fast” and left-brain-like “thinking slow.” The ability (versus inability) to rationalize their decisions will make near-future AI systems like autonomous cars, household robots, automated assistants, and AI-powered social media far more trusted and far more trustworthy (versus a string of unfortunately newsworthy disasters). We’ll recap the methods AI has developed for this sort of symbolic representation and automated reasoning, the progress over the last several decades, and the current state of the art.

The SmartData Conference was held in San Francisco January 30th and February 1st, 2017. More information on Doug’s talk can be found here, and more information on the Conference is available here.