On the thresholds of knowledge

摘要

We articulate the three major findings and hypotheses of AI to date: 1.(1) The Knowledge Principle: If a program is to perform a complex task well, it must know a great deal about the world in which it operates. In the absence of knowledge, all you have left is search and reasoning, and that isn't enough.2.(2) The Breadth Hypothesis: To behave intelligently in unexpected situations, an agent must be capable of falling back on increasingly general knowledge and analogizing to specific but superficially far-flung knowledge. (This is an extension of the preceding principle.)3.(3) AI as Empirical Inquiry: Premature mathematization, or focusing on toy problems, washes out details from reality that later turn out to be significant. Thus, we must test our ideas experimentally, falsifiably, on large problems.