AI as open system

 The last AI winter during the early 1990s was caused by the ignorance towards open systems namely Teleoperation for robot control. What the AI researchers have prefered instead were autonomous algorithm controlled AI systems. The goal was to program a large scale software similar to an operating system or a word processing software and make the software higly intelligent. Such bloat AI projects have failed, even a program written in 200k lines of code in C/C++ code isn't able to control a toy car in an obstacle course.

The reason why closed system failed is because existing programming languages like C/C++ can't grasp reality outside of a robot, existing algorithms like RRT pathplanning are too slow for realtime planning and the possible amount of trajectories for a robot in the reality is too large. This mixtures of challenges prevents that robot projects in the 1990s have become succesful. The written sourcecode was useless and the project doesn't make any sense.

The term AI winter is referencing to a situation in which the problems are known but no answer is available. This answer is maybe the transition from closed systems towards open systems. Open systems in robotics are equal to teleoperation which means that the human operator controls the robot. So its not longer an algorithm controlled robot but its an RC car. The main advantage is that such an open system can be realized easier with existing technology. The needed software is minimal and no true Artificial Intelligence is required.

What is used instead for remote controlled robots is a sender/receiver device which is an interface between human and machine. Such a device has multiple tasks:
1. it receives radio waves over the air
2. it parses natural language commands
3. it receives sensor signals
4. it transmits radio waves to the remove control
5. it transmits natural language status information to the human operator

In one word, the transceiver connects the robot with the environment.



The picture on the left shows the older paradigm. A robot in enclosed by a box and forms a closed system. The robot's AI is a turing machine executed on the CPU and the goal is to invent a sophisticated algorithm which makes the robot intelligent.

The picture on the right shows the modern paradigm which assumes two different systems connected by a sender/receiver. THese two systems are the robot and the environment around the robot. Both systems need to communicate. Communication doesn't require an autonomous algorithm but a protocol.

The transition from older closed systems into modern open systems is equal to discard algorithm oriented AI in favor of a communication perspective.