CHARBONNEAU – The long journey from George Boole to AI

IN THE MID-1800s, the mathematician and philosopher George Boole developed a logical system for determining what was true or false. His Boolean algebra eventually became the foundation of digital electronics, computers, and artificial intelligence.

I enjoyed teaching Boolean algebra to electronics students at Thompson Rivers University. Boole’s algebra, when combined with “truth tables,” could solve digital circuit problems.

One exercise I would do with the class would be to design a car alarm in which a number of conditions needed to be present, or not be present, for the alarm to go off.

I would draw a truth table on the board and we would fill it with the desired input variables, such as an open door. We equated what was true to equal 1 and what was false to be 0 –the two numbers of digital electronics.

From the truth table, we would produce an often cumbersome equation that could be simplified with Boolean algebra.

The simplified equation could then be directly translated into a circuit comprised of logic gates. From there we would go into the lab and build the circuit and test it.

My fascination with Boole went beyond his algebra. As a philosopher, Boole wanted to use his logic to explore the connection between mathematical logic and the mind.

In his book “An Investigation of the Laws of Thought,” he says:

“The design of the following treatise is to investigate the fundamental laws of those operations of the mind by which reasoning is performed; to give expression to them in the symbolical language of a Calculus, and upon this foundation to establish the science of Logic and construct its method.”

Remarkably, artificial intelligence also holds promise in connecting language to intelligence. If language is a function of the mind, does AI demonstrate the presence of a mind?

The modern philosophical debate centers on whether intelligence is independent of the platform on which it operates: can minds exist in a computer system, equally as well as a biological platform?

The path from the origins of computer logic to AI is paved with the innovations of philosophers.

Another philosopher I admire is the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein. He worked on the philosophy of logic, mathematics, the mind, and language. Wittgenstein is credited for inventing the truth table in 1918.

Wittgenstein is not always easy to understand, in part because in his later life he dismisses his earlier work.

He attempted to reveal the relationship between language and the world –something that remains a serious problem with AI.

Wittgenstein established the limits of the use of language in philosophy. He argued that the logical structure of language provides the limits of meaning. And the limits of language are the limits of philosophy. He criticises philosophy for attempting to say what is unsayable.

Where we are today, on the threshold of understanding the connection between language and the mind, has been a long journey with the involvement many others, even Boole’s great-great-grandson Geoffrey Hinton.

Hinton is widely considered the godfather of AI. He has had a great influence on the field in the past several decades. In the Eighties, he championed an approach based on deep neural nets: mathematical abstractions of the brain in which neurons are represented with code.

David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.