Wired has an article() about Roger Penrose’s “The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe”
His earlier work “Emperor’s New Mind” has been my most favourite book so far. I read it when my 3rd semester at college was about to end. It was an absolute epiphany. It was that book that which intrigued my interest in Computers more than ever, It is that which(I guess subconsciously ) made me shift of from hard-core electronics guy to mainstream Computer Science. It is that which generated so much of interest in me in Theory of Computation. It highly convinced me that strong AI as advocated is not a possibility at least with current mathematics that we have. It led me to explore more about Godel and his theorem, it gave me inputs for my argument (in the form questions ofcourse) for Mr Fieganbaum ,( regarded as ‘Father of Expert Systems’) against expert systems.
I used to get very delighted during the AI course when prof Sangal would hush away any mention of Godel in his class and would chuckle knowing how right penrose was. I used to have endless debates with my very good friend priyam running together for days. It would start on the topic of strong vs weak AI and change into a debate between ‘free will’ and ‘causality’. We used to love it but then it used to irk our other friends 🙂
One of the Key take away from the book for me was the Godel’s Theorem and how it argues agains the Strong AI
Godel’s Theoram – “A system If it is complete then it will be inconsistent and if the system is consistent then it will be incomplete”
I am dying to lay my hands on this new book from Penrose.
-Rajan
mtrajan.com 