Inventing
in an Expanding Frontier of Ignorance –
TRIZ
for Information-era Artificial Intelligence and Systems with a Mind
Extended
Abstract
Chances are remote that when Feynman was delivering his famous lectures on physics in 1962 and
wrote “we do not yet know all the basic laws: there is an expanding frontier
of ignorance” in USA, he would have heard of Altshuller, the Soviet prisoner released after Stalin’s death from
Siberian confinement, who was discovering the laws of evolution of technical
systems through painstaking analysis of thousands of patents which was to
result in the Theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ in Russian parlance). It
is indeed the peculiar fate of our world that multiple directions are taken for
exploration and development in decoupled social, political and cultural systems
– as USA and USSR were after World War II – yet the key to “knowing” or
creating “new knowledge” continues to be an evolutionary approach – rather than design, direction and
planning.
Feynman describes that although
the sole judge of scientific truth is experiment giving us hints to the laws
underlying our world, yet imagination is needed to “create from these hints the
great generalizations – to guess and then to experiment to check again whether
we have made the right guess.” He further states that laws of nature are
approximate and, “… at each stage it is
worth learning what is not known, how accurate it is, how it fits into
everything else and how it may be changed when we learn more” [1]. This is
indeed the process of continuous learning and understanding through an
evolutionary process. However, despite
its discovery by Darwin, 150 years back, acceptance of evolution by natural selection as a possible model of explanation
of progress of cosmos is relatively a recent phenomenon [2]. As Ridley states
in [3], “the way the human history is taught can therefore mislead, because it
places far too much emphasis on design, direction and planning, and far too
little on evolution”. He further states that, “… to see past the illusion of
design, to see the emergent, unplanned, inexorable and beautiful process of
change that lies underneath”.
One of the earlier recognition of evolution due to ingenuity
of human mind reflected in the successful inventions described in patents and
technological knowledge was discovered and explained by the Theory of Inventive
Problem Solving (TRIZ). This resulted in discovery
of laws of evolution of technical systems which became the basis of classical
TRIZ. As per Altshuller the purpose of evolution of technical
systems was to achieve the “Ideal system”. Technical systems exist or are
created to perform a function. The ideal technical system describes the
fulfillment of the function with reduction in number of the elements of
technical system that actuates the function. TRIZ and its laws of evolution of
technical systems discovered in the era
of physical systems – the era of machines – explained the fulfillment of
function in an ideal way. The algorithm of achieving ideality was to avoid the
costly “trial and error” approaches of evolution – small local changes in
multiple copies of the same system which get reflected in the “subsequent
generations of system”. TRIZ proposed to jump the costly “trial and error” and
focused on ideality and jump many avoidable generations of unnecessary random
stages.
Three
Eras – Machine, Information, and Mind
From the era of machines – dominated by automobile – which incidentally became the model for classical TRIZ – we are rapidly
moving in the era of information. Our
understanding of “information” – its nature and its deeper manifestations – is
increasing day by day. When we started investigating the applicability of laws
of system evolution as described by TRIZ in the
current era of information, we realized that TRIZ, understandably missed the key ingredient, i.e., information,
embedded in modern technical systems and environment in which these technical
systems will be operating.
We discovered that human beings by collectively evolving
their technical systems, are trying to make each technical system as close to a
human being as possible – or at least a model of human being and its
environment based on the current understanding of the world (for example, understanding of laws of
physics and chemistry in making an automobile) and the current understanding
of the system called the human being. As man understands the world around it as
well as its body and its mind, it wants to create an “ideal man” or at least an
idealized human of all technical systems it is creating. This is an unexpected discovery and may take the readers used to
classical TRIZ, sometime to accept it [4].
Increasing
Intelligence of Technical Systems
Given our understanding of the
current information era and how technical systems are evolving from their
predominantly physical characteristics into information enriched technical
systems, we propose in this paper a new law – the law of increasing intelligence of technical systems.
We are in the
era of information today. This is an era that has replaced the era of machines
that started with industrial revolution. This era of information is giving us
systems that are becoming increasingly intelligent.
From the dumb systems that were
responding to inputs to perform specific functions, we have evolved to guided systems and smart systems of the information era. The next stage of evolution
of technical systems is increasingly becoming clear as we are seeing emergence
of brilliant systems which we predict
will become genius systems. By 2050
AD, the world will have technical systems with more intelligence than
biological intelligence – predicted as the Singularity.
From information era we are now entering rapidly into the era of mind. This we
call as law of increasing intelligence of
technical systems.
In
the current Information Era, TRIZ needs to update its definition of a technical
system to include “information”. The goal of system evolution should be to
create ideal systems that attain perfect information to actualize the
underlying system functions.
In
the emerging era of Mind, TRIZ should be about ideas and thoughts. How can any
technical system process and actuate ideas? The ideal technical system will be
able to generate and actuate perfect ideas to attain system functions needed in
real time or even ahead of time.
Lines of
System Intelligence
In the era of information and coming era of mind of
technical systems we have proposed a new law of evolution of technical systems
using TRIZ way of exploration and creating new knowledge. We call this the Law of Increasing Intelligence of
Technical systems. We further propose that TRIZ should incorporate this new
law to the existing laws of evolution of technical systems as the current
information era and future mind era of technical systems will require new ways
and concepts to invent systems that will have more information and in future
will have the fourth fundamental we call the mind as their most prominent
components.
In the talk we will explain the Lines of system
intelligence under the law of increasing intelligence of technical systems
that we have uncovered in our exploration so far. These are lines for –
(a) Increasing levels of sensing and detecting,
(b) Increasing levels of processing data, information and
knowledge,
(c) Increasing levels of Learning,
(d) Increasing levels of choice –making,
(e) Increasing levels of concept-creation,
(f) Increasing levels of uncertainty, randomness and
vagueness
Final Point:
The Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Artificial Super
Intelligence (ASI) debate going on in the world today misses out on one key
point on “intelligence” – the intelligence need not be “conscious” or “aware”.
Non-consciousness intelligence is what we are calling artificial intelligence
and that perhaps will continue in the near future and may exceed biological
intelligence as per “singularity” by 2045-2055. However, the “artificial
consciousness” really has no clarity – unless we claim the cloning of human
beings to be the creation of artificial consciousness.
References
[1] The Feynman Lectures on Physics
[2] Steven J. Dick and Mark L. Lupisella (Ed.), Cosmos & Culture – Cultural Evolution in
a Cosmic Context, NASA report number, NASA SP-2009-4802, 2009.
[3] Ridley M., The
Evolution of Everything – How New Ideas Emerge, Harper Collins, London,
2015.
[4] Bhushan, N., Law of increasing Intelligence of
Technical Systems, accessed on 18th March 2016 http://aitriz.org/triz-articles/inside-triz/596-law-of-increasing-intelligence-of-technical-systems
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