IEA Thoughts
(From Li): I have tried to teach this quote in my classes for more than a decade. This is my most favored quote from the movie Matrix (There is NO Spoon)
In my classes, I changed the quote for the students:
- “Do not try solving a difficult problem … That is not possible.”
- “Instead … only trying to realize the truth.”
- “What truth?” (you say)
- “There is no problem!”
- “Then, you will see. It is not the problem you are trying to solve. It is only yourself.”
In our lab, I change the quote again for my students working on the IEA project:
- “Do not try achieving AI … That is impossible.”
- “Instead … only try to realize the truth.”
- “What truth?” (my students say)
- “There is no AI!”
- “Then, you will see. It is not the AI that’s achieved … It is only yourself.”
IEA project enables us to look inside ourselves. As a start, our motivation was never trying to replace any engineer and further, we did not believe that was even feasible in practice either. Rather, IEA enables us to achieve a deeper understanding what “engineering intelligence” really means, and if we call ourselves an “engineer,” what that term actually represents.
Perhaps, through a deeper understanding, we can find a better way to assist people doing the real work in the industry.
At the end, “there is no IEA” (and there is no AI) - only the people.
Note: At first, “there is no IEA” might sound a bit philosophical, but it can actually be quite a scientific statement if we think a bit deeper. From one perspective, it can mean that an IEA is only as good as the people who design it. From another perspective, it can mean that IEA’s intelligence can never go beyond the domain knowledge of the people who teach it. Thus, from yet another perspective, the “intelligence” shown by IEA is only a manifestation of the intelligence of the people behind it. Of course, all these statements are only hypotheses now and we will do more work to scientifically articulate them in the future.