John Haugeland on the failure of micro-worlds

BuyArtificial Intelligence from Bookshop.org(with kickback)(without kickback) One of the better books I read in college was Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea (1985) by philosopher John Haugeland. One of the sections I found most striking and memorable was about Terry Winograd's SHRDLU. SHRDLU, around 1970, could carry on a discussion in English in which it would manipulate imaginary colored blocks in a “blocks world”. displayed on a computer screen. The operator could direct it to “pick up the pyramid and put it on the big red cube” or ask it questions like “what color is the biggest cylinder that isn't on the table?”. Haugeland was extremely unimpressed (p.190, and more generally 185–195): To dwell on these shortcomings, however, is to miss the fundamental limitation: the micro-world itself. SHRDLU performs so glibly only because his domain has been stripped of anything that could ever require genuine wit or understanding. In other words, far from digging down to the essential…