Re: The nature of Heuristics. D Lenat (Reader)

Lenat says:

> Heuristics are compiled hindsight, and draw their power from the various kinds of regularity and continuity in the world; they arise through specialization, generalization, and —surprisingly often— analogy. 


You could argue that generative AI is mostly about heuristics as winning memes in the parameter space. Whilst this lacks transparency it works very effectively in respect to text, images, video and sound by exploiting statistical regularities at different levels of abstraction.  Heuristics expressed in symbolic form are by comparison transparent and weaker in their applicability, especially when they lack the metadata needed for plausible reasoning with fuzzy concepts. Lenat was probably unaware of the work being done by Alan Clark and others on plausible reasoning as a means to model human problem solving.

> On 8 Sep 2024, at 10:02, Paola Di Maio <paola.dimaio@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hope everybody had a decent summer
> 
> As we weigh human vs artificial intelligence, the question of whether it is possible to automate
> heuristic reasoning comes up. I have the pleasure of remembering  Doug Lenat with the attached paper written almost half a century ago and still relevant today

UK summer was pretty wet and cool apart from a few warm days. My colleagues in Europe have had to put up with excess heat.

Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org>