How the CODIL model was developed,

A detailed paper discussing the theory underlying CODIL, and it relevance to modelling the human brain and its connections with more conventional computing models is being drafted.  This post summaries the main issues to be included in that paper.

 

CODIL started in the 1960's and is best understood as a research project to develop an "interactive electronic" clerk that could work symbiotically with humans in the context of very large organisations and management information systems.  The key requirement was that the clerk used the human terminology to describe the task, was fully transparent and could, if asked, explain what it was doing. There was no explicit attempt to model human intelligence, but the hope would be that the human/computer partnership would be more effective than humans working alone.   The current reassessment of the original research, interpreted in terms of a network, suggests CODIL unintentionally  reversed engineered some aspects of how the human brain stores and processes information and supports intelligence. It is therefore not surprising the CODIL system uses a very different model of information processing to the stored program computer model based on the pioneering work of Turing and Von Neumann.

 

If we go back to first principles any observer of the real world will have an incomplete and uncertain view of the surrounding environment, whether the observer is a small animal (human ancestor) with a primitive brain eons ago, a human adult, or a large social organisation. In 2002 Donald Rumsfeld described the importance of real world uncertainty in a large organisation :

Should a computer system which does not understand be described as intellegent?

 

Gary Marcus from Marcus on AI produces an excellent newsletter which has been consideri0ng recent AI graphic and video demonstrations and looking at their limitations. The above picture is from an AI generated video of a monkey playing chess.

Before continuing take a good look at the picture and decide what aspects of the picture shows a lack of understanding by the AI which drew it.

Histories of the Internet

Archives of IT inaugural Forum on the Histories of the Internet 2024

On 9 January 2024 AIT held the first of an annual series of forums on the histories of the internet and our networked digital society.  Below you can read the talks by a multi-disciplinary set of academics, practitioners and leaders from civil society, business, industry, and government.

The Experiences of a Human Chatbot (Cooper Technical Bureau. 1962-1965)

In my first job I was employed as graduate level clerk providing what could be considered to be a human "chatbot" service to technical management in a research organization (The Cooper Technical Bureau) of an international company (Cooper. MacDougal & Robertson, later part of the Wellcome Foundation). The information department acted as a combined library and mail room for technical correspondence and my job, as a member of a small team, was to ensure that management (both in the UK and overseas) were fully informed of issues which could affect the development of the veterinary and insecticidal products that we sold worldwide. As such I was taking information from manually indexed text documents and providing summary repost and answers to question. I was also involved in integrating new information into the existing paper archives.

Draw an office with the far wall being a large window through which can clearly be seen two or three ostriches in an African savannah landscape. In the office a man is sitting at a desk writing, with a small pile of papers beside him. On the other side of the office there is a four-draw filing cabinet and books in a bookcase.

TANTALIZE - A heuristic problem solver written in CODIL

 

 

The New Scientist magazine published the following news item on 21 August 1975

For those who have trouble solving the Tantalizers that run each week in New Scientist, Dr Chris Reynolds of Brunel University has developed a computer programme.

"I'm sorry it can be done," commented Martin Hollis, a philosopher at the University of East Anglia, who creates the Tantalizer each week. "The best puzzles are the ones which are too elusive for a computer."

TANTALIZER 226

 

The picture was generated by AI using the description "A school girl wearing an orange blazer which has a pink badge on the pocket. The girl is wearing a turquoise hat and a khaki scarf. Her skirt is black"

SCHOOL COLOURS

 

TELL ME, PROFERROR PINHOLE, WHICH SCHOOL DOES YOUR DAUGHTER ALICE GO TO.

 

LET ME THINK.

 IS IT THE ONE WITH THE ORANGE HAT AND THE TURQUOISE SCARF?

OR WITH THE KHARKI BLAZER AND THE ORANGE EMBLEM?

OR WITH THE PINK BLAZER AND THE ORANGE SCARF?

OR WITH THE KHARKI SCARF AND PINK EMBLEM?

OR WITH THE KHAKI HAT AND TURQUOISE EMBLEM?

I FEAR I CANNOT RECOLLECT.

 

GOOD HEAVENS. PROFESSOR, HOWEVER MANY SCHOOLS ARE THERE?

 

JUST FOUR AND I HAVE ONE DAUGHTER AT EACH.

BETH GOES TO ST GERTRUDE'S

CLARE WEARS  A TURQUIOSE HAT AND

DEBBIE WEARS A KHARKI EMBLEM.

ST ETHELREDA'S FLAUNTS A PINK SCARF,

ST FAITH'S AN ORANGE BLAZER AND

ST IDA'S A PINK HAT.

 

ANE WHOSE ARE THOSE CLOTHES FLUNG DOWN ON THE FLOOR OVER THERE?

 

THE TURQUOISE HAT AND THE KHARKI BLAZER BELONG TO DIFFERENT GIRLS.

AS FOR THE TURQUOISE BLAZER, WELL I THINK YOU MIGHT WORK THAT OUT FOR YOURSELF."

Author Martin Hollis

Published in the New Scientist

 

More information about  TANTALIZE - a heuristic problem solver written in CODIL

Try and solve the puzzle yourself before seeing how TANTALIZE solves it.

Exchanging information about CODIL and related topics

 

The purpose of this blog is to encourage the change of information of information about CODIL, the underlying theory and its relation to human and artificial intelligence.  It will also be concerned with the history of the CODIL project and the problems of providing support for unconventional "blue sky" ideas, especially when the person who has those ideas is neurodiverse. Constructive criticism is alway welcome - as such criticism is at the heart of all healthy scientific research.