Simon's Ant & the Model vs. Harness debate #SundayHarangue# I can't help but be reminded of Simon's 🐜 parable while watching the recent debates on whether the "intelligence" is in the model or the harness. In his Sciences of the Artificial, Herbert Simon introduced the world's smartest ant to AI. He asks us to imagine this ant make his way across a wind- and wave-molded beach. Looking at its path, we see irregular angular segments--not quite random walk, for it has an underlying sense of goal-directedness. He then challenges us to think about the origin of this impressive complexity: Is it from the amazing mind of this super-intelligent ant, or just a simply dead-reckoning ant faced with an incredibly complex (and yet hopefully ergodic) environment? 1/