Roger C. Schank (1946–2023)

What does it mean to be 'intelligent'? Roger Schank, an expert in Artificial Intelligence and psychology, hints here towards an answer using an original approach. If nowadays we are capable of conceiving ultra-complicated machines able, for instance, to solve complex mathematical problems, these machines however still lack a deeply human feature: telling stories that is, articulate thoughts and relationships with others through tales.

From religious myths to the therapeutic benefits of show more opening up, from dreams to memories and even the whole entertainment industry (books, movies, music...) we human beings indeed have a deep need to create and tell stories and, through such stories, deal with the outside world. To be intelligent then, would be this ability to tell stories and understand whose of others; even better, make sense of our experiences and others' to explain the world surrounding us -interpret events.

From then on, the author insists on the importance of memory and try to get a better understanding of how it works. Which informations do we 'decide' to store? Why? How then do we access those informations in order to, in light of our past experiences, establish links with a situation, make predictions, and act accordingly (after all, one of the clear signs of a remarkable intelligence is the ability to make connections and see analogies where they are not obvious, thus being creative and/ or solving problems)?

This book is fascinating. Not only does it shows how important are stories in our way of thinking and interacting with the outside world (beyond psychology and cognitive sciences, interesting links can be made with linguistics too) but, also, because it demonstrates that the way we articulate our stories, what we decide to remember, how, and how we relate it, all are crucial key to understand how do we think ourselves and project ourselves towards others -in a word: how memory is the key underlying our identity.

Extremely accessible, fascinating and focusing on stories, memories and their importance to understand what intelligence is, Roger Schank adds here an interesting piece to the puzzle of what is human nature. One of these impossible to put-down type of read! show less

This book was a life changing experience. I have no memory of how I found it, but I had it at about the time I went back to college, circa 1977. I probably just picked it up in the bookstore. It's beginnings of what became cognitive science, and the approach to artificial intelligence via social psychology and linguistics was, at the time, revolutionary. This book was where I met SAM, which appears in other Schank books as well.

Most of the concepts in this book will seem old hat to anyone show more who has been in the field for a while, or is newly arrived, but in 1977 it kept me up nights. It's still an interesting basis from which to approach the field. show less

Although I let most of my AI library go when I retired, I kept certain books out of sentiment. I've been puzzling over why the name Riesbeck seemed so familiar, and after noting he was an LT author, and then seeing a list of his works, I did a quick face palm. I bought this book new, while I was still in school (I was a late bloomer), and have used it multiple times over the years. It's one of the very few books I own that has handwritten notes (and even worse, to my shame, it has multiple show more dog-eared pages). I also had Schank autograph it (in long ago times, during a Cognitive Science conference in LA in 1985 or so.

It was just an excellent and useful book. show less

Interesting theorizing about how memories are organized in the brain so that we can be reminded of something old in a new situation. Generally good, but, to me, seems to be a blueprint for neurolinguistic investigation.