What Do Heidegger and Roomba Have in Common? Embodied Artificial Intelligence as a Playground for Continental Philosophy

Abstract

Roomba, the robotic vacuum cleaner, would not exist today without the rich history of philosophy, which presents the groundwork for traditional artificial intelligence. The latter sees cognition as an arbitrary symbol manipulation in its “mind as computer” metaphor. This view led to many problems, such as the “frame” and the symbol grounding problem, which sparked the AI revolution. The ideas of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and of other continental philosophers, which were realized by the roboticist Brooks, Roomba’s creator, were among the driving forces of embodied artificial intelligence (EAI). Its basis is the emergence of cognition from the sensorimotor loop between an agent and the environment. However, the immensely dispersed field of EAI is without common paradigmatic grounds. Aware of its problems regarding autonomy and meaning, this paper focuses on the philosophy-EAI relationship. It identifies philosophy as crucial for (E)AI, and offers a review of current trends and real-life examples. The paper concludes with a critique of current trends, and suggests some solutions originating from philosophy.