CCM - Reading Assignment

The Architecture of Jumbo

Part 1 - Relatively Short Answer

  1. What is the main topical theme of the chapter, and why is it of significance.
    2. Answer: The main topical theme of this chapter is to discuss the concept of "juggling" mental objects. The author talks about the process of solving anagrams. He equates the letters of the words as objects that can be juggled in order to solve the anagram. This is significant because it discusses the mental process of solving an anagram. The brain is very mysterious and hard to understand. I believe researching how the brain solves problems could be very useful.

  2. Do your best to describe (in more than two words) the long-term goal shared by Jumbo and some of Hofstadter's other AI projects.
    3. Answer: "The long-term goal shared by Jumbo and some of Hofstadter's other AI projects is to demonstrate the equivalence of cognition with "deep perception" - the non-modality-specific layers of perception that involve funneling into highly abstract and often nonverbalizable categories". (Schank, 1980; Hofstadter, 1979, 1981, and 1982c)

  3. What is Herb Simon's perspective on Hofstader's architecture and the aspect of cognition that it purports to study?
    4. Answer: Simon's perspective on Hofstader's architecture and the aspect of cognition that it purports to study was that it would be a waste of time for cognitive scientists to try to analyze or reproduce the many microscopic parallel events in the brain that make up recognition or perception

  4. What does Hofstader claim is the core mystery of all of intelligence?
    5. Answer: Hofstader claims that the syntactic-semantic transition zone is the core mystery of all of intelligence.

  5. What is the "concrete purpose" of Jumbo?
    6. Answer: The "concrete purpose" of Jumbo is to imitate how a human brain would solve the newspaper anagram game named "Jumbo".

  6. Hofstader states that Jumbo is a building program. Explain what he means by this.
    7. Answer: Hofstader states that Jumbo is a building program because when one first sees the string the human brain starts to separate the strings into individual letters and then out of those letters one can form a glom or gloms. So esesntually you are building letters to be a glom.

  7. What is the "serious purpose" of Jumbo?
    8. Answer: The serious purpose of Jumbo is to be a model of the mental processes of assembly and transformation.

  8. What is the significance of Jumbo's task domain?
    9. Answer: The significance of Jumbo's task domain is to exemplify how intelligent the human brain is. One example of how intelligent the human brain is, is to examine how a human tackles a "Jumbo" problem. This process involves mentally juggling individual letters to come up with something significant.

  9. Hofstader suggests that in any type of perception, much back-and-forth motion must occur. What does he mean by this?
    10. Answer: Hofstader describes the back-and-forth motion of any type of perception to be an intimate mixture of construction, destruction, regrouping, and rearrangement of tentative structures.

  10. Jumbo rests on two basic analogies. One is the way that complex molecules are constructed inside a living cell; the other is to the way that bonds of human friendship or romance are formed in a chaotic world.
    1. Describe the biological analogy.
      2. Answer: He describes the process of solving a Jumbo problem to the assembly of molecules in a cell. A cell contains many atoms that come in a lot of different varieties. This he compares to the letters of the world problem. The molecules are bound together by covalent bonds. Example of molecules that are bound together are water (H20), hydroxide (HO), carbon dioxicde (CO2) which he compares to consonant clusters such as "th", "ng", or "ck". The next level of the molecule of a cell is the amino acid. He compares their clusters to a more sophisticated consonant cluster such as "thr" which is made out of "th" and "r" and "ngth" or "cks". These molecules are all formed together to produce a cell. The assembly of molecules are not synchronized with one another and they exist independently from each other. This process he relates back to words being glommed together asynchronously to form higher-level structures.

    2. Describe the sociological analogy.
      3. Answer: The sociological analogy that Hofstader gives is a romance analogy. Two human beings dissassemble and essemble a lot of times which he brings back to the analogy of cells that also break up and come back together.


  11. Jumbo is a parallel processing system. Describe the nature of its parallelism.
    12. Answer: In the preface, Hofstader describes the parallel terraced scanning that Jumbo does in his Preface. The process of finding the preconditions of a KS is a parallel procedure.

  12. Central to Hofstadter's modeling of the unconscious juggling of mental objects are the notions of "sparks" and "affinities".
    1. Describe, in words and by means of examples, what Hofstadter means by "sparks".
      2. Answer: When two letters come in contact with each other they can form a "spark" by means of attraction. The attraction can produce a syllable.

    2. Describe, in words and by means of examples, what Hofstadter means by "affinities".
      3. Answer: Hofstader uses affinity to describe the chemistry that two letters can have. For example "t" and "h" can form "th" which can help in creating an English word. However, one must considering the ordering of a "spark" because if one starts with "h" and then proceeds with "t" you will get "ht" and that does not create most English words.


  13. What is a codelet?
    14. Answer: A codelet is a small piece of code.
  14. It is the queue-like structure in which all codelets are palced while they are waiting to be run. What is it called?
    15. Answer: The queue-like structure in which all codelets are palced while they are waiting to be run is called the Coderack.

  15. Are codelets selected for execution in a deterministic fashion? Elaborate some on your "yes/no" answer.
    16. Answer: I think that codelets are not selected in a deterministic fashion because of the coat rack example that Hofstadter gives. He compares the codelet to a coat on a coat rack and the coat rack to be the Coderack. He said that coats are removed from any spot along the coat rack which indicates that codelets are removed from any spot along the Coderack.

  16. Is all processing in programs that adhere to Hofstadter's architecture implemented via codelets? Elaborate some on your "yes/no" answer.
    17. Answer: I think that all processes that adhere to Hofstadter's architecture is implemented via codelets because codelets and are mentioned in his parallel terraced scan process and his romance among the letters process.

Part 2 - Very Short Answer

  1. When a codelet is run, it ...
    1. is taken off the "queue"
    2. can cause changes to the "knowledge base"
    3. may place follow-up codelets onto the "queue"
    4. all of the above
    Answer: 4

  2. The self-propogating nature of codelets enables lengthy processes to be carried out in small disjoint steps, each step setting up its own possible continuation. It resembles the way that long chains of chemical reactions get carried out in independent small steps in the cell. (TRUE or FALSE)
    3. Answer: TRUE

  3. In Prolog, processing is carried out by means of rules which operate on the knowledge base. By analogy, in Hofstadter's architecture, processing is carried out by codelets that operate on the BLANK. Fill in the BLANK!
    4. Answer: Coderack

  4. Intelligence in programs that exploit Hofstadter's architecture, if indeed they have any, clearly has not been directly programmed; rather, it emerges as a statistical consequence of the way that many small program-fragments interact with each other. (TRUE or FALSE)
    5. Answer: TRUE

  5. Intelligence in Jumbo and Copycat and other such programs is like a chess program that has a subtle tendency, but one that is crystal-clear to sufficiently keen chess observers, of "liking to get its queen out early" -- a tendency taking its programmers completely by surprise, as they never knowingly or explicitly put any such strategic concept into their program. (TRUE or FALSE)
    6. Answer: FALSE

  6. The phenomenon suggested in the previous question has been referred to as ...
    1. an "innocently emergent" quality by Daniel Dennett
    2. "epiphenomenon" by Douglas Hofstadter
    3. both of the above
    Answer: 3

  7. Early in his discussion of Jumbo, Hofstadter indicates that its strategy is based on two analogies: Which are they? (Choose TWO!)
    1. the way that complex molecules are constructed inside a living cell (cellular biology)
    2. the way that macroscopic order emerges naturally from the statitics of microscopic disorder (statistical mechanics)
    3. the way that bonds of friendship or romance are formed in a chaotic world (sociology)
    Answer: 1 and 2

  8. Later on in his discussion of Jumbo, Hofstadter indicates that a third analogy is releveant to Jumbo's strategy: Which is it/ (Choose ONE!)
    1. the way that complex molecules are constructed inside a living cell (cellular biology)
    2. the way that macroscopic order emerges naturally from the statistics of microscopic disorder (statistical mechanics)
    3. the way that bonds of friendship or romance are formed in a chaotic world (sociology)
    9. Answer: 2
  9. According to Hofstadter, the reliable emergence of macro-laws from micro-chaos could even be summarized in a metaphorical equation: themodynamics = statistical mechanics (TRUE or FALSE)
    10. Answer: TRUE

  10. The philosophy on which Hofstadter's architecture is based goes against the grain of traditional AI work, which seeks to find explicit rules (not emergent or statistical ones) governing the flow of thoughts. (TRUE or FALSE)
    11. Answer: TRUE

  11. Hofstadter uses the term "thinkodynamics" to refer to laws governing thoughts at their own level. (TRUE or FALSE)
    12. Answer: FALSE

  12. Hofstadter uses the phrase "statistical mentalics" to refer to the laws governing subcognitive events that form the basis of higher-level thought. (TRUE or FALSE)
    13. Answer: FALSE

  13. What corny but (hopefully) catchy equation does Hofstadter use to articulate his vision of the essential mission of AI should be in the future.
    14. Answer: thinkodynamics = statistical mentalics
  14. It was the first of Hofstadter's programs to make clear use of the architecture with which he is so closely associated. What is its name?
    15. Answer: Jumbo

  15. It is a parallel investigation of many possibilities to different levels of depth, quickly throwing out bad ones and homing in rapidly and accurately on good ones. What is it?
    16. Answer: Parallel terraced scanning

  16. The idea articulated in the previous question was Hofstadter's, but much of it was already present in:
    1. GPS
    2. SOAR
    3. Hearsay II
    Answer: 3

Part 3 - More Relatively Short Answer

  1. Say something about codelets that you find particularly interesting.
    2. Answer: The thing about codelets that I find to be particularly interesting is the example used to explain what a codelet is. I did not at first envision a codelet to be like a coat on a coatrack but after reading that example I had a more clearer picture as to how it worked.

  2. Say something about the coderack that you find particularly interesting.
    3. Answer: The thing about the coderack I find particularly interesting is that it is what holds the codelets. Without the coderack there will be no place to hold the codelets.

  3. In order of salience, most salient to least salient, write down what you think are 7 particularly salient things aobut Hofstadter's architecture for computationally modeling cognitive processes.
    4. Answer:
    1. I liked the way he described parallel terraced scan with his sorority rush example.
    2. I really liked his Sparks and Affinities example because he related his architecture to a human interaction such as dating. It gave the example more of a visual aspect.
    3. His Sparks and Affinities example also detailed that even though two letter can have a connection the ordering must be correct in order for it to work which I did not think of before. ("th" vs "ht")
    4. I liked his use of the cellular analogy to relate to his architecture.
    5. I don't think that the average person thinks about how one solves a problem like Jumbo but I liked how he tried to articulate how humans solve this.
    6. Relating back to his two analogies on which Jumbo rests, I especially found the detailing of the different stages of relationships to be very salient.
    7. I found the terraced scan to be very salient because it thoroughly worked through how the human brain solves a problem like Jumbo