Hubert Dreyfus
Human intelligence comes from a body engaged in a world, not from a set of rules: that is why programs that try to formalize everything fail.
Life
American philosopher (1929-2017), professor at MIT and then Berkeley, known for his critique of rule-based artificial intelligence. Drawing on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, he argues that human intelligence comes from a body engaged in a world and from know-how that cannot be reduced to explicit rules. His objections of the 1960s and 70s were first mocked by AI researchers, then partly acknowledged.
Main works
RAND report criticizing the claims of cognitive simulation.
Computers cannot match human intelligence, which depends on the body and the situation.
A commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, the basis of his critique of thought as calculation.
In his own words
« any AI program using frames to organize millions of meaningless facts so as to retrieve the currently relevant ones was going to be caught in a regress of frames for recognizing relevant frames for recognizing relevant facts »
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceSkilled know-how comes from experience and practice, not from explicit rules worked out by reason alone.
Dreyfus, Mind over Machine (1986)
The mind is neither a separate substance nor a rule-following program: intelligence comes from a body engaged in the world.
Dreyfus, What Computers Can't Do (1972)