Task transforming tools vs. Next generation intelligent artificial agents

Task transforming tools vs. Next generation intelligent artificial agents
Edwin Hutchins, Cognition_in_the_Wild

These tools thus implement computation as simple manipulation  of physical objects and implement conceptual judgements as perceptual inferences . But perhaps this refinement will be lacking from the next generation of tools .

 By failing to understand the source of the computational power in our interactions with simple "unintelligent" physical devices, we position ourselves well to squander opportunities with so-called intelligent computers . The synergy of psychology and artificial intelligence may lead us to attempt to create more and more intelligent artificial agents rather than more powerful task-transforming representations .

“We are all cognitive bricoleurs - opportunistic assemblers of functional systems composed of internal and external structures . “  Defining a class of designed external tools for thinking makes it difficult to see the role of internal artifacts and  “difficult to see the power of the sort of situated seeing that is present in the Micronesian navigator's images of the stars.”

 The stars are not artifacts . They are a natural rather than a human -made phenomenon , yet they do have a structure which , in interaction with the right kinds of internal artifacts (strategies for "seeing"), becomes one of the most important structured representational media of the Micronesian navigation system.

The more or less random sprinkling of stars in the heavens is an important component of the Micronesian system. In a sky with an absolutely uniform distribution of stars, navigation by the stars would be impossible : information is difference , and there would be no differences to be seen as informative .

If we ascribe to individual minds in isolation the properties of systems that are actually composed of individuals manipulating systems of cultural artifacts , then we have attributed to individual minds a process that they do not necessarily have, and we have failed to ask about the processes they actually must have in order to manipulate the artifacts . This sort of attribution is a serious but

frequently committed error .