QUESTION:

I am trying writing a Piagetian critique of AI, and have been looking for explicit quotes from Piaget on the possibility of an artificial intelligence. They seem to be few and far between - can anyone point me at anything, either from Piaget or the Geneva school generally?

ANSWER:

Piaget and his colleagues were generally very impressed with Artificial Intelligence which they saw as a natural development of Piaget's conception of the mind as a self regulating but growing system. The person in Geneva most active in trying to find a bridge between Piaget and AI has been Guy Cellerier. But I remember Piaget himself saying to me how important he considered the work being done in AI.

The side of AI considered most important in Geneva is not the engineering side that actually tries to build commercial products but the theoretical side that they see (I think correctly) as Piagetian epistemology. One good source from the Etudesd'epistemologie genetique series is

Cellerier, Papert & Voyat (1968) Cybernetique et pistemologie. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

Also see Barbel Inhelder's endorsement of Marvin Minsky's major AI work: The Society of Mind.

(Answered by Laurence Miller)

(This article is from email discussions through owner-piaget-list@interchange.ubc.ca)