Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI (Bradford Books) - Hardcover

Brooks, Rodney

4.06

34 ratings by Goodreads

9780262024686: Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI (Bradford Books)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262024683 ISBN 13: 9780262024686

Publisher: MIT Press, 1999

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Until the mid-1980s, AI researchers assumed that an intelligent system doing high-level reasoning was necessary for the coupling of perception and action. In this traditional model, cognition mediates between perception and plans of action. Realizing that this core AI, as it was known, was illusory, Rodney A. Brooks turned the field of AI on its head by introducing the behavior-based approach to robotics. The cornerstone of behavior-based robotics is the realization that the coupling of perception and action gives rise to all the power of intelligence and that cognition is only in the eye of an observer. Behavior-based robotics has been the basis of successful applications in entertainment, service industries, agriculture, mining, and the home. It has given rise to both autonomous mobile robots and more recent humanoid robots such as Brooks' Cog. This book represents Brooks' initial formulation of and contributions to the development of the behavior-based approach to robotics. It presents all of the key philosophical and technical ideas that put this "bottom-up" approach at the forefront of current research in not only AI but all of cognitive science.

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Review:

Will we build intelligent robots from the brain down or from the legs up? Rodney A. Brooks, controversial director of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, is betting on the latter--and the smart money's following him. Cambrian Intelligence, comprised of eight papers written between 1985 and 1991, explores the technical and philosophical aspects of behaviour-based robotics and offers much for the interested mind to ponder. Does cognition mediate between perception and action, or is this an illusion? Can a robot be called "intelligent" if it lacks anything we would call a brain? Brooks, simply by asking these questions, launched a new movement in artificial intelligence and these brash, bold papers show how he laid the work for his eventual conquest of Mars with tiny autonomous robots.

Whether you're new to Brooks, know him from his work or saw him in the documentary Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, you'll find much to love in Cambrian Intelligence. The four technical papers do inspire moments of anxiety in non-technical readers but the four philosophical papers are splendidly thought-provoking and even a bit confrontational. (Reviewers have called his work "inflammatory" but Brooks earns this privilege because he's right.) While the work reported here is several years old, it still feels fresh and new to those of us who grew up reading about top-down artificial intelligence as if it were the only and obvious design choice. The next generation of intelligent robots are growing from the bottom up and you can get in on the ground floor with Cambrian Intelligence. --Rob Lightner

About the Author:

Rodney A. Brooks is Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT and director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is also chairman and chief technological officer of iRobot Corporation. He is a founding fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The author of several books and a contributor to many journals, he was one of the subjects of Errol Morris's 1997 documentary, "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control," Brooks was born in Australia and now lives in suburban Boston.

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