Debate

CI =?= AI
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- CI is a notion containing everything in science.
  (Suhrab Khanmohammadi)
- CI = Soft Computing (= AI)
  (Ashok Deshpande (1 anonymous))
- CI pursues the goals of AI with numeric rather than symbolic means.
  (anonymous)
- I thought it was Welsh for AI.
  (Cindy Marling)
Nonstandard definitions
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- Computational Intelligence = Computational Methodologies?
  (Jeanny S. Ryffel)
- A great deal of thinking to get the computer to think for you.
  (Charles Stammers)
- I do not know what computational intelligence is but you accepted my paper, so I must be doing it. That is, defined in a case rather than model based way.
  (Karl Brazier)
- A system designed to produce unexpected results.
  (Karl Brazier)
- Automated simplification.
  (Karl Brazier)
- Investigation into problems of a complexity insolvable without computers based on (mathematical) methods derived from biological and medical studies. Application areas are engineering, medical research and economics.
  (Clemens Knezu)
Do we need a definition at all?
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- I don't think we should worry about definitions of terms such as computational intelligence, data fusion and so on. They are no more than convenient umbrella terms. Like any linguistic term, they are defined by their use and a conference such as this is defined by its submissions. Precise definitions are not possible, neither are they helpful.
  (Andrew Webb)
It is harmful!
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- Computational Intelligence (CI)? In my humble opinion, before we may ask 'quo vadis?', we should discuss the term CI itself. To be honest, I am not very fond of it. All the paradigms that are considered to be contained in CI like 'Fuzzy Set Theory', 'Neural Networks', 'Evolutionary Computation/Genetic Algorithms', and so forth, are purely descriptive. The word 'Intelligence', however, suggests a rather uncritical judgement of the things comprised under CI. I personally consider the word 'intelligence' (in this context) as ambiguous and dangerous. I very well remember an anecdote that was spread in some newsgroups a few months ago. Even if it was a fake (what I don't know), it might remind us all of situations we have already experienced ourselves. It was said that the following dialog actually took place at a PhD defense (the thesis was about something using neural networks) at an American university:
  Referee: Why do you call your method 'intelligent'?
  Candidate: Because it uses neural networks.
  Referee: If I managed to resemble what your ANN does with some other method, would this then be intelligent?
  Candidate: No!
  Referee: Why not?
  Candidate: Because it would not be using neural networks!
  In any case, it's still the human expertise that makes fuzzy systems, ANNs, GAs, etc. work, it's not any method itself. The methods themselves only do number crunching. 'Intelligence' is a highly sensitive and subjective term that should not be used/abused too carelessly.
  I did not particularly like the term 'Soft Computing' (almost nobody understood quite well what the 'soft' should have meant; but everybody had at least some imagination what it could stand for), but at least it did not contain any tendency of subjective judgement like the term 'CI' does.
  In any case, I do not feel that we need a special term for gluing disciplines together that are quite independent of each other, not even if they can be used together synergetically. It is, for instance, quite a good deal to apply numerical methods to tuning of fuzzy controllers, but would ever anybody come up with the idea to say that numerical analysis is or should be a part of CI or Soft Computing? Surely not!
  (Ulrich Bodenhofer)
- To my opinion, the introduction of new terms such as 'computational intelligence' or 'soft computing' causes us more harm than it helps. In fact, what allows us to randomly group techniques together under the umbrella "intelligent"? The only intelligence of those techniques is that of their developers. When I recently was asked to design a course on CI, I finally decided to call it "Computational Techniques", not using the word intelligence and leaving room for advanced numerical techniques as well. After all, we all have the same aims: developing decision support systems, simulation models for complex systems, etc. Definitely "our" intelligence is needed for reaching those goals.
  (Bernard De Baets)

CI is a notion containing everything in science.

CI = Soft Computing (= AI)

CI pursues the goals of AI with numeric rather than symbolic means.

I thought it was Welsh for AI.

Computational Intelligence = Computational Methodologies?

A great deal of thinking to get the computer to think for you.

I do not know what computational intelligence is but you accepted my paper, so I must be doing it. That is, defined in a case rather than model based way.

A system designed to produce unexpected results.

Automated simplification.

Investigation into problems of a complexity insolvable without computers based on (mathematical) methods derived from biological and medical studies. Application areas are engineering, medical research and economics.