ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines what the author believe to be the principal problems of cybernetics, especially with respect to artificial intelligence (AI). The distinction between simulation and synthesis cuts across the current cybernetic-AI distinction, since many cyberneticans are interested in computer modelling and many AI people are concerned with how their work helps in understanding human behaviour, both "normal" and "abnormal". The actual situation that then pertains is that all too often AI people will regard cybernetics as an empty subject. If cybernetics is concerned with precision and effectiveness in modelling complex, interactive adaptive feedback and feedforward systems, this in practice will entail supplying a formalised account of fields of activity as varied as history and art or business science. There are a number of people — some even within cybernetics and AI — who are sceptical or appalled, or both, by what is sometimes claimed, or what is anyway implicit in the whole project.
