At present,there are three major schools that have a greater influence on Artificial Intelligence research:symbolism,connectionism,and behaviorism.
Symbolism,also known as logicism,psychologism or computerism,its principles are mainly the hypothesis of the physical symbol system(i.e. the symbolic operating system)and the principle of limited rationality.
Proposition:This school believes that Artificial Intelligence is derived from mathematical logic. Mathematical logic developed rapidly from the end of the 19th century,and began to be used to describe intelligent behavior in the 1930s. After the computer appeared,a logical deduction system was realized on the computer. Its representative result is the heuristic program LT logic theorist,who proved 38 mathematical theorems,showing that computers can be used to study human thinking and simulate human intelligence activities. This school believes that the basic unit of human cognition and thinking is the symbol,and the cognitive process is an operation on the symbolic representation. Symbolism is dedicated to simulating the cognitive process of humans with computer symbolic operations. The essence is to simulate the abstract logical thinking of the human left brain. By studying the functional mechanism of the human cognitive system,certain symbols are used to describe the cognitive process of humans,and input this kind of symbol into a computer that can process symbols,so as to simulate the cognitive process of human beings and realize Artificial Intelligence.
Connectionism,also known as bionicsism or physiologism,is an AI school based on the theory of biological evolution. Its main theoretical basis is the connection mechanism and learning algorithm between neural networks.
Proposition:The principle is mainly the neural network and the connection mechanism and learning algorithm between the neural network. This school believes that Artificial Intelligence is derived from bionics,especially the study of human brain models.Starting from the research results of neurophysiology and cognitive science,the connectionist school attributed human intelligence to the results of high-level activities of the human brain,emphasizing that intelligent activities are the result of a large number of simple units running in parallel through complex interconnections. Among them,Artificial Neural Network is its typical representative technology. Its representative result is the brain model created by the physiologist McCulloch and the mathematical logician Pitts in 1943,the MP model,which created a new way to imitate the structure and function of the human brain with electronic devices. It starts with neurons and then studies neural network models and brain models,opening up another development path for Artificial Intelligence.
Actionism,also known as evolutionism or cyberneticsism,is based on cybernetics and perception-action control systems.
Cybernetics thinking has become an important part of the ideological trend of the times as early as the 1940s and 1950s,affecting early Artificial Intelligence workers. The cybernetics and self-organizing systems proposed by Wiener and McCulloch,and the engineering cybernetics and biological cybernetics proposed by Qian Xuesen and others have influenced many fields. Cybernetics connects the working principles of the nervous system with information theory,control theory,logic,and computers. Early research work focused on simulating the intelligent behavior and role of humans in the control process,such as research on cybernetic systems such as self-optimization,selfadaptation,self-stabilization,self-organization,and self-learning,and carried out“cybernetic animals” development. In the 1960s and 1970s,certain progress was made in the research of these cybernetic systems. The seeds of intelligent control and intelligent robots were planted,and intelligent control and intelligent robot systems were born in the 1980s. Behaviorism only appeared in the face of a new school of Artificial Intelligence at the end of the 20th century,and it aroused the interest of many people.The representative author of this school first recommends six-legged walking robot,which is regarded as a new generation of “cybernetic animals”,a control system based on perception-action mode that simulates insect behavior.
From the perspective of the historical development of the three schools of Artificial Intelligence, semiotics believes that the cognitive process is ontologically a symbolic processing process. The human thinking process can always be described by a certain symbol. Its research is based on static,sequential,and serial line of digital computing model to deal with intelligence,seeking symbolic representation and calculation of knowledge. It is characterized by top-down. On the other hand,connectionism simulates the cognitive process that occurs in the human nervous system and provides a cognitive neurological research paradigm that is completely different from the symbolic processing model. It is argued that cognition is the interaction of interconnected neurons.Behaviorism is different from the previous two. AI is the interaction between the system and the environment,and it is an adaptation to the complex environment of the outside world.