Rodney Brooks

Rodney Brooks

An Australian-American roboticist who attacked symbolic AI's assumption that intelligent action requires an internal model of the world. His subsumption architecture layered simple reactive behaviours that responded directly to sensor input, producing insect-like robots that coped with real environments while model-based systems were still deliberating. His papers "Intelligence Without Representation" and "Elephants Don't Play Chess" argued that the world is its own best model. He directed MIT's CSAIL and co-founded iRobot, maker of the Roomba, and Rethink Robotics, and remains a pointed sceptic of AGI forecasts. (See also: Symbolic AI, Hubert Dreyfus, Marc Raibert, AGI)