The ends justify the rules

Hi John, I just finished discussing things with Sam                               

Great! So what did he have to say about this whole “laws of thought” thing? 😊

Well, there’s a bunch of different approaches  😊                               

Either you try programming them in from the start, or you make the AI learn them on its own                                  

Would either of those then yield the same “rules” humans use?

Probably not, there’s still far too many simplifications and shortcuts in the models

Generally people care more about the results than the procedure  

So as long as it works, it isn’t relevant whether or not an AI uses the same process a human would use

Exactly, moreover we don’t really know what rules humans use      

basically, that computers cannot understand the world like humans do

We don’t know how we get stuff done?

Perhaps I should also go talk to a psychologist or a logician, but: no, not really

We can’t properly generalize how we solve problems to how any problem can be solved in general

and we don’t know precisely enough how the rules are “programmed” in the brain

OK then, so AI just is a tool we use to solve problems, whether or not in a human way

and the whole “laws of thought” thing then doesn’t really matter, right?

I think we might have to split out how AI is used in different context.

The AI in an automated assembly line certainly doesn’t need to think and behave like a human

but research in computer science and in psychology does have to ambition to discover these laws

So mostly we’d need to split up theory and application

Perhaps that would be the best. And AI would certainly be on the theoretical side

Very good, the only thing we would still need is a good example or metaphor to make it clear to the reader