Greg Linden has a great article in Communications of the ACM on The Rise of the External Brain. As Greg notes, we have spent a lot of time trying to develop an Artificial Intelligence, a task at which we have not been successful. But he notes that we have had some success from in the form of chaos from the internet. The web, especially search engines supplement our own brain, filling in incomplete bits of knowledge when required. This viewpoint is in direct contradiction to the kinds expressed by Nick Carr, who believes that search engines are not a positive influences on our intelligence.
I find myself aligning with Greg. He writes
And so it is fitting that the biggest progress on building an external brain also comes from chaos. Search engines pick out the gems in a democratic sea of competing signals, helping us find the brilliance that we seek. Occasionally, our external brain leads us astray, as does our internal brain, but therein lies both the risk and beauty of building a brain on disorder.
It also tells me that search engines are important. The amount of time we spend talking about search engines, knowledge engines, etc is not a waste given their sheer importance in our lives and our intelligence. As scientists we use search engines routinely, but I still believe that the “scientific web” (in my case the life science web) is still far from complete and we need to continue to enhance our scientific intelligence by feeding this chaos and then allowing our search engines to harness it.
"we have spent a lot of time trying to develop an Artificial Intelligence, a task at which we have not been successful."
This statement or observation is not entirely correct. While it is true that we have not been able to attain our goal so far, we now understand that it was premature enthusiasm. We also understand that the task is more complex than what we once thought it is.
Yes it was premature enthusiasm, but it's also true that to date we have not been successful, precisely because it is more complex that we thought it would be.
Intelligence in Chaos
Greg Linden has a great article in Communications of the ACM on The Rise of the External Brain. As Greg notes, we have spent a lot of time trying to develop an Artificial Intelligence, a task at which we have not been successful. But he notes that we have had some success from in the form of chaos from the internet. The web, especially search engines supplement our own brain, filling in incomplete bits of knowledge when required. This viewpoint is in direct contradiction to the kinds expressed by Nick Carr, who believes that search engines are not a positive influences on our intelligence.
I find myself aligning with Greg. He writes
It also tells me that search engines are important. The amount of time we spend talking about search engines, knowledge engines, etc is not a waste given their sheer importance in our lives and our intelligence. As scientists we use search engines routinely, but I still believe that the “scientific web” (in my case the life science web) is still far from complete and we need to continue to enhance our scientific intelligence by feeding this chaos and then allowing our search engines to harness it.
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