Friday, August 23, 2013

On concept computing - take one

We think in concepts.  We study concepts, we reason about concepts.   
Now we also have "concept computing", the term was coined by Mills Davis.  It does not appear in Wikipedia yet, but it is an interesting and useful idea.  Mills Davis uploaded his AAAI keynote talk on Slideshare recently, and the slides below is taken from there.   The work we are doing now is somewhat the projection of this idea for the event-driven world.  I'll write about it in the future.  Meanwhile -- this presentation is recommended 

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Big data analytics will never replace creative thought


The claim expressed in the title of this posting is the title of  a piece in "Data Quality News" by Richard Jones.   It claims that the "data craze" - the conception that data mining alone is sufficient to get decisions in all areas, is a misconception in some areas.  Jones provides two examples:  marketing - where statistical reasoning gives a great value, but it deals with the small details, however  human creative thinking deals with the big picture, and data mining alone cannot get it,  and healthcare - again, data mining can be of great value, but interactions with the patient and personal examination by a physician is vital.    
I guess that the research into AI should also deal with how to create artificially creative thinking.  As I've written before Noam Chomsky has criticized the AI community by making statistical reasoning its mainstream and deserted the strive for  "solid model of the universe" .  I guess that after some disillusionment from the "data craze" the industry will settle on getting data mining its right place, as a supporting technology.

More on this - later.