Polanyi's Revenge and AI's New Romance with Tacit Knowledge

In his 2019 Turing Award Lecture, Geoff Hinton talks about two approaches to make computers intelligent. One he dubs--tongue firmly in cheek--"Intelligent Design" (or giving task-specific knowledge to the computers) and the other, his favored one, "Learning" where we only provide examples to the computers and let them learn. Hinton's not-so-subtle message is that the "deep learning revolution" shows the only true way is the second. Hinton is of course reinforcing the AI Zeitgeist, if only in a doctrinal form. Artificial intelligence technology has captured popular imagination of late, thanks in large part to the impressive feats in perceptual intelligence--including learning to recognize images, voice, and rudimentary language--and bringing fruits of those advances to everyone via their smartphones and personal digital accessories.