Research Stories

by Carrie Barnett

Asim Roy was on sabbatical at Stanford University in 1991. It was then that several years of thinking about the operation of the brain and artificial systems inspired him to act. He threw down the gauntlet to the leading "Connectionist" scholars. Roy challenged the prevailing school of thought and the very foundations of the technologies behind smart machines and artificial intelligence.

The Connectionism school of thought in learning says that connections between neurons in the brain allow us to learn. The prevailing wisdom in artificial intelligence is that humans learn by storing a system of rules.

Roy is an information systems professor at ASU's W. P. Carey School of Business. He uses a simple analogy to explain his idea. Lock a person in a room, he says. Now teach that person how to hit a tennis ball every possible way, for years, but without the advantage of actually swinging a racket. Roy says that supposed tennis savant would fall easily to someone who'd played only a little tennis in the flesh. Why? Because our brains actually learn from different contacts with the ball.

In other words, human learning comes from data generated from the practice of a task. That task might be the learning of mathematics, languages, or sports. Roy says there is profound truth to the saying that "practice makes perfect."

Connectionists do not believe that there is a control mechanism that guides these connections. They would argue that a driver is not controlling the car, but is rather part of a mutual give-and-take dynamic.

Roy agrees that there are indeed connections that have to be made between neurons (or, in the case of a computer network, neural nodes). But he argues that there is also a titular controller organizing the system.

Roy says his theory does not posit that there is a single executive controller in the brain. He thinks that there may be "multiple distributed controllers" that control various subsystems or modules of the brain.

"A new theory is on the table and it practically invalidates Connectionism," says Roy of his idea's acceptance. "People will be forced to look at it and think about the arguments—and they are solid arguments—and they either have to refute it or not."

This story was excerpted from the Knowledge @ W. P. Carey web site. To see the full article or other stories from ASU's W. P. Carey School of Business, go to: http://knowledge.wpcarey.asu.edu