AI would definitely fall into the inventive sciences.
It seems that well-established physical or historical sciences invariably serve as the theoretical underpinning for each of the inventive sciences (electrical/mechanical/chemical engineering has the physical sciences, medicine has biology, etc.). What is the theoretical underpinning of AI? Traditionally it has been computer science, but on the face of it CS says little or nothing about the mechanisms of intelligence. Neuroscience isn’t quite it either, since neuroscience is focused on describing the human brain, and any principles that might apply to intelligence in general need to be abstracted away.
It would seem, then, that AI has no theoretical underpinning, and one can make a good argument that the lack of advanced AI is due to this very fact. Certainly the goal of AI is to (eventually) engineer machine intelligence, but it would seem that a major focus of present-day AI is to acquire theoretical insight that would serve as the foundation of an engineering effort. I think this shows that either AI is not just an inventive science, or that we need to talk separately about intelligence science and intelligence engineering.
“AI has no theoretical underpinning”
Very good—that is the hole in what I said about AI. I have always thought of AI as a part of computer science but of course it is possible to think of it as separate. In that case it is underpinned by computer science and (?). Neuroscience if you are trying to duplicate human intelligence (or even ant intelligence) in a non-biological system. But neuroscience is not sufficiently developed to underpin anything. I don’t know how far Information Theory has progressed but I suspect it is not up to the job at present.
It seems that well-established physical or historical sciences invariably serve as the theoretical underpinning for each of the inventive sciences (electrical/mechanical/chemical engineering has the physical sciences, medicine has biology, etc.). What is the theoretical underpinning of AI? Traditionally it has been computer science, but on the face of it CS says little or nothing about the mechanisms of intelligence. Neuroscience isn’t quite it either, since neuroscience is focused on describing the human brain, and any principles that might apply to intelligence in general need to be abstracted away.
It would seem, then, that AI has no theoretical underpinning, and one can make a good argument that the lack of advanced AI is due to this very fact. Certainly the goal of AI is to (eventually) engineer machine intelligence, but it would seem that a major focus of present-day AI is to acquire theoretical insight that would serve as the foundation of an engineering effort. I think this shows that either AI is not just an inventive science, or that we need to talk separately about intelligence science and intelligence engineering.
“AI has no theoretical underpinning” Very good—that is the hole in what I said about AI. I have always thought of AI as a part of computer science but of course it is possible to think of it as separate. In that case it is underpinned by computer science and (?). Neuroscience if you are trying to duplicate human intelligence (or even ant intelligence) in a non-biological system. But neuroscience is not sufficiently developed to underpin anything. I don’t know how far Information Theory has progressed but I suspect it is not up to the job at present.