The Yellow Brick Roadmap

Is human intelligence a roadmap for AI?

Peter Sweeney
inventing.ai
Published in
7 min readJun 9, 2017

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Every great project needs a roadmap. For many, the path to AI entails a deep understanding of human intelligence. If that seems obvious, you’ll be surprised how this story unfolds and the key role your expertise may play in it.

I’ve argued that human intelligence is bloatware, and bloatware can kill (or at least seriously delay) even the most determined projects. The exemplar of superhuman intelligence isn’t human intelligence, it’s the human invention of scientific discovery.

But even if you agree that automated scientific discovery is the right goal, isn’t a deep understanding of human intelligence prerequisite knowledge? Aren’t the most foundational ideas of neural networks and deep learning derived from this roadmap? And if not, what are the alternatives?

In this post, I’ll examine the arguments behind the human intelligence roadmap and why it should be treated with skepticism. I’ll also surface the key question for evaluating the merits of your own roadmap.

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Peter Sweeney
inventing.ai

Entrepreneur and inventor | 4 startups, 80+ patents | Writes on the science and philosophy of problem solving. Peter@ExplainableStartup.com | @petersweeney