Scifi writers have imagined the future of robots without regard for what’s actually doable. Humans are extraordinarily complex. Building a machine that can mimic our behavior will be hugely difficult.

Here’s another way of stating the problem: even educated people, seeing a robot in a movie, have no way to judge which parts of the robot’s behavior are something we can do today, or something we might not be able to do in 500 years.

“Understanding Robots” tries to provide a framework for judging developments in this field. Non-technical. Find this article on my site Improve-Education.org, #17.

Another approach: “American Spectator” (July, ‘06) has a very good if very long article about AI, with many important names, dates and quotes. Title: Why Robots Can’t Think. The writer and I end up making many of the same points. This article is especially good if you want the history of AI. My article is shorter, more conceptual, and more of a summary of where we are and where we will be.

I am working on a tribute to Rudolph Flesch, who wrote “Why Johnny Can’t Read” and, 25 years later, “Why Johnny Still Can’t Read.” Everything he said seems to me common sense. But the educational establishment tried to pretend he didn’t exist. How? Why?

I find only two viable theories to explain this bizarre bit of American history. 1) Our top-level educators were a gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Or, 2) Our top-level educators were ideologues who pushed look-say as a way to dumb down the population. Are there other theories? If you can send any helpful information, I’ll credit you or not, as you prefer. The Flesch tribute will appear on my essay site Improve-Education.org.)

As I research this thing further back in time, I find that the hoax was already in play before 1910. It’s really quite a sad story. A small group of wannabe social engineers decided that too much literacy was a BAD THING. Unfortunately, these people were our top educators! Question: has any of these people ever recanted? Compare, for example, Max Eastman and many other top intellectuals—they embraced Communism but then had the good sense to say they were mistaken. Surely there are educators like that. I would love to chat with such a person.