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Your AI Superpower

8 reasons why epistemology, a largely ignored discipline within machine intelligence, is a must-have skill set for leading teams.

Peter Sweeney
inventing.ai
Published in
6 min readJul 18, 2017

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The goal of any artificial intelligence or machine learning system is to create good knowledge, whether in automating a process, predicting new observations, or illuminating entirely new domains. It follows that a fundamental consideration in machine intelligence is the underlying theory of knowledge creation. Just as flying machines are enabled through a theory of flight, knowledge creation machines are enabled through a theory of knowledge.

Just as flying machines are enabled through a theory of flight, knowledge creation machines are enabled through a theory of knowledge.

Obviously, a theory of knowledge isn’t an impediment to the pursuit of machine intelligence. People pursued flying machines long before a rigorous theory of flight was developed. Similarly, many are pursuing machine intelligence without a rigorous explanation of how good knowledge is created. Moreover, many successful practitioners would be hard-pressed to illuminate the theory of knowledge that underpins their solutions.

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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