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Weaknesses on Adam’s analysis of AI
I feel that Adam undermines the existence of women’s propositional knowledge. It seems to me that she has become so trapped into her own discussion that she might have unwillingly denied women the status of propositional knowers. I do not mean to agree with the idea that body-based or skilled-based knowledge should not be given the status of knowledge. What I mean is that although women might have skilled-based knowledge, they also have propositional knowledge. Furthermore, skilled-based knowledge is not exclusive to women but it also pertains to all forms of communities that value group knowledge over individual constructed intelligence.
In criticising AI for its incapacity to reflect skill-based knowledge, Adam denies the whole possibility of AI’s functioning. For if in her view, it is essential that women’s knowledge be included in AI and at the same time skills cannot be translated into propositional language, AI systems can never exist. Of course one can look at it and argue that she does not fully deny the possibility of AI but actually acknowledges its limitations. But if one limits AI it will no longer be considered as artificial intelligence for it will reflect only part of human knowledge. Brooks’s (1991) argument that "human intelligence is too complex and too little understood to be decomposed into the right subpart for representation in conventional AI systems" is a rich critique (Adam, 1998, p. 145).
Adam’s possible solutions do not offer a practical way out of traditional AI. As she points out herself, feminist AI projects are "not trying to build an alternative ‘successor’ AI" but rather building a critique of its premises (Adam, 1998, p. 157). Therefore the feminist critique of AI becomes limited to creating an awareness of AI’s gender biasis. Adam’s argument that Artificial-Life’s robots fail in that they do not reflect the feminine sense of caring for bodies and parenthood is absurd. I have two problems with this idea. The first is that of linking and reinforcing the idea of women’s role as nurturers. The second is that Adam’s suggestion on designing robots that would care for others, nurture, and fall in love, besides being senseless would remove the very thing that differs humans from machines (Adam, 1998, p. 155 and 180).
~ Intro ~ Alison Adam ~ Artificial Intelligence ~ Adam's views ~ Feminist Epistemology ~ Expert Systems ~ ~ Strengths ~ Weaknesses ~ Traditional Epistemology ~ Works Cited ~
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