Pearl has been spruiking his causality formalisms for years, but they don't seem to have caught on despite widespread dissemiy of the ideas. I've read them and my reaction was "hm, interesting" rather than "oh! I see how this could be useful"
Anyone else have opinions on why his ideas haven't caught on more generally? -- Charles On Wed., 22 Aug. 2018, 5:28 am Bharat Shetty, <bharat.she...@gmail.com> wrote: > Sharing an intriguing interview with Judea Pearl related to his book "The > Book of Why", a book that I have been reading and enjoying. > > "In his new book, Pearl, now 81, elaborates a vision for how truly > intelligent machines would think. The key, he argues, is to replace > reasoning by association with causal reasoning. Instead of the mere ability > to correlate fever and malaria, machines need the capacity to reason that > malaria causes fever. Once this kind of causal framework is in place, it > becomes possible for machines to ask counterfactual questions — to inquire > how the causal relationships would change given some kind of intervention — > which Pearl views as the cornerstone of scientific thought. Pearl also > proposes a formal language in which to make this kind of thinking possible > — a 21st-century version of the Bayesian framework that allowed machines to > think probabilistically. > > Pearl expects that causal reasoning could provide machines with human-level > intelligence. They’d be able to communicate with humans more effectively > and even, he explains, achieve status as moral entities with a capacity for > free will — and for evil." > > > https://www.quantamagazine.org/to-build-truly-intelligent-machines-teach-them-cause-and-effect-20180515/ > > PS: If there are similar mind-bending and worldview changing books, holler > about them at me. > > Regards, > - Bharat >
