Saturday, January 27, 2024

A Possible Model of the Brain's Symbolic Assembly Language?

A brain typing in a computer program

 On 26-27th September 2022 the Royal Society, London, held a discussion meeting on "Cognitive Artificial Intelligence" at which the following poster was displayed:


A Possible Model of the Brain's Symbolic Assembly Language?

CODIL

An early “Blue Sky” research idea that was “abandoned” because it was incompatible with Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence

§The CODIL research was triggered by a 1967 study of the salesman/clerical interface of a large 1970s sales accounting system.

  • §  A key design factor was transparency as an essential requirement was that the computer must always be able to explain what it was doing in human terms.

  • §  CODIL is a task independent language framework, with a very simple syntax, which described tasks in terms of sets and set operations, rather than “program” and “data.”

  • §  It maps onto a recursive network, where every node can represent a set, a simple subset of a set, or the description of a set.

  • §  The “current context” models human short-term memory.

  • §  The language was powerful enough to support a powerful heuristic

    problem solver as well as database and educational applications.

  • §  BUT – People who have leant a procedural programming language

    find the CODIL approach counter-intuitive.

    So what next? Should the research restart? And if so by whom and where? Because of my age the research records could end up in a skip if no-one is interested?

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