Intelligence without Robots: A Reply to Brooks

In his recent papers, entitled Intelligence without Representation and Intelligence without Reason, Brooks argues for mobile robots as the foundation of AI research. This article argues that even if we seek to investigate complete agents in real-world environments, robotics is neither necessary nor sufficient as a basis for AI research. The article proposes real-world software environments, such as operating systems or databases, as a complementary substrate for intelligent-agent research and considers the relative advantages of software environments as test beds for AI. First, the cost, effort, and expertise necessary to develop and systematically experiment with software artifacts are relatively low. Second, software environments circumvent many thorny but peripheral research issues that are inescapable in physical environments.