In his history of artificial intelligence, The Master Algorithm, University of Washington professor Pedro Domingos called them “tribes.”3 Each tribe nurtured its own philosophy—and often looked down on the philosophies of others. The connectionists, who believed in deep learning, were one tribe. The symbolists, who believed in the symbolic methods championed by the likes of Marvin Minsky, were another. Other tribes believed in ideas ranging from statistical analysis to “evolutionary algorithms” that mimicked natural selection.
