There is no valid argument leading FROM your disenchantment with Markov based chat programs, TO a conclusion that machine learning is invalid. Markov chatters are a toy.
Did you produce a better chat bot based on UG? - No? Then on what basis are you junking machine learning?
Machine translation is far from a solved problem. But Chomsky's school claimed they were going to solve it in the 60s or perhaps the 70s. Do you know what is the basis for the most successful current approach to machine translation?
Analysis of text. (But not the kind of simplistic junk one does in a Markov chatter)
All you have done is suggest that some beautiful perfect text model exists natively in every person. (Presumably this evolved somehow - or if you are Chomsky, it just developed like a crystal for no apparent reason). This isn't an explanation of anything unless you actually find that model instantiated in the brain. But this is just not happening. So either our instruments are still too crude to detect it, or it's not really there.
Appealing to an as-yet unknown perfect universal text model does not build a better chat bot or a better explanation of human behavior.
True understanding of intelligence must incorporate an understanding of how learning occurs. Because anyone who watches children sees learning occurring, and only doctrinaire Chomskyists deny that it occurs (because it is not beautiful enough and some abductive argument is claimed to show that it is not sufficient).
Did you produce a better chat bot based on UG? - No? Then on what basis are you junking machine learning?
Machine translation is far from a solved problem. But Chomsky's school claimed they were going to solve it in the 60s or perhaps the 70s. Do you know what is the basis for the most successful current approach to machine translation?
Analysis of text. (But not the kind of simplistic junk one does in a Markov chatter)
All you have done is suggest that some beautiful perfect text model exists natively in every person. (Presumably this evolved somehow - or if you are Chomsky, it just developed like a crystal for no apparent reason). This isn't an explanation of anything unless you actually find that model instantiated in the brain. But this is just not happening. So either our instruments are still too crude to detect it, or it's not really there.
Appealing to an as-yet unknown perfect universal text model does not build a better chat bot or a better explanation of human behavior.
True understanding of intelligence must incorporate an understanding of how learning occurs. Because anyone who watches children sees learning occurring, and only doctrinaire Chomskyists deny that it occurs (because it is not beautiful enough and some abductive argument is claimed to show that it is not sufficient).