This 8 part seminar by Chomsky on the "cognitive revolution" from 1990s provides context for his claims of the limits of AI through exploration of linguistics.
The point of the seminar is to offer his personal thoughts on the limits of our understanding of our own cognition through consideration of the faculty of language.
Rather than saying what can or can't be done, he discusses the limits of science with respect to our capacity to understand ourselves and other organisms, and from there generalizes towards proscribing the limits of any machinery we may build.
His thesis is know thyself.
His interest is in attempting to circumscribe the unknown under the premise that due to our biological scope and limits, we're free to traverse an edge of knowledge, but also we must face that there is always a domain of the unknown, which will forever be inaccessible to us, and that our own nature may reside within the domain of the unknowable. But rather than being a deficit or hazard, the realization leads to creative purpose as we learn to adapt to ourselves, by which we make meaningful choices in the creation of a humane world.
Before listening to this seminar, consider listening to this 1hr lecture on the history of science to see if Chomsky's style of discourse is approachable:
--Mind, language and the limits of understanding--
r721•7mo ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35067619 (377 comments)