Can AI accommodate imagistic expertise?

After years of focussing almost exclusively on rather primitive symbolic forms of knowledge representation, AI has started a systematic attempt to design and implement a computational correlate to human diagrammatic representation and reasoning. However, a number of thinkers are on record as confidently claiming that such representation and reasoning is forever beyond a digital computer. Are such claims to be taken seriously? We think so/spl minus/when they are based on mental imagery more sophisticated than that which AI customarily concerns itself with. This "recalcitrant" imagery is the province of certain experts (e.g. authors and screenwriters).<
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