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Computers hold back AI

as the “information” model is alien to brains

John Ball
Pat Inc
12 min readJan 6, 2025

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Computers use information, but brains do not. Encoding data is alien to brains but assumed anyway as a result of computer science history. Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

AI is being held up by standard ideas used in computer science that are ineffective for human brain emulation. The main problem is that the representation used in computers is alien to that of a brain but is forced in nonetheless. We need to move beyond 1950s data models!

Animal skills evolved first in their brains that were then extended in human brains. Human language, for example, emerges from sufficient capacity to label the existing animal brain representations (meaning) from our senses, motor control and integrated combinations.

But AI evolved from digital computer representations; the representations that ushered in the information age.

To appreciate the difference, let’s start with a 1950s view of a computer from technology’s legends that in many respects is still a starting point today.

John von Neumann defined the digital computer that provides the concept for information and its transfer over channels explained by Claude E. Shannon. Information starts with encoded data, such as that defined by Character Sets.

As usual, I will use hotlinks to online references for further reading.

Computers lead to the model of information

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Pat Inc
Pat Inc

Published in Pat Inc

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John Ball
John Ball

Written by John Ball

I'm a cognitive scientist working on NLU (Natural Language Understanding) systems based on RRG (Role and Reference Grammar). A mouthful, I know!

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