Intelligence Without Reason

Computers and Thought are the two categories that together de ne Arti cial Intelligence as a discipline. It is generally accepted that work in Arti cial Intelligence over the last thirty years has had a strong in uence on aspects of computer architectures. In this paper we also make the converse claim; that the state of computer architecture has been a strong in uence on our models of thought. The Von Neumann model of computation has lead Arti cial Intelligence in particular directions. Intelligence in biological systems is completely di erent. Recent work in behavior-based Arti cial Intelligence has produced new models of intelligence that are much closer in spirit to biological systems. The non-Von Neumann computational models they use share many characteristics with biological computation. Copyright c Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991 This report describes research done at the Arti cial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Support for this research was provided in part by the University Research Initiative under O ce of Naval Research contract N00014{86{K{0685, in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency under O ce of Naval Research contract N00014{ 85{K{0124, in part by the Hughes Arti cial Intelligence Center, in part by Siemens Corporation, and in part by Mazda Corporation.