(a) Hidden Markov models and POMDPs are probabilistic models, not necessarily Bayesian.
According to Wikipedia:
A hidden Markov model (HMM) is a statistical Markov model in which the system being modeled is assumed to be a Markov process with unobserved (hidden) states. A HMM can be considered the simplest dynamic Bayesian network.
.
(b) I am using the standard definition of a causal model, first due to Neyman, popularized by Rubin. Everyone except some folks in the UK use this definition now. I am sorry if you are unfamiliar with it.
I suppose you mean this.
It seems to be a framework for the estimation of probability distributions from experimental data, under some independence assumptions.
(c) Statistical models cannot solve causal problems. The number of times you repeat the opposite, while adding the word "clearly" will not affect this fact.
You still didn't define "causal problem" and what you mean by "solve" in this context.
A "Bayesian network" is not necessarily a Bayesian model. Bayesian networks can be used with frequentist methods, and frequently are (see: the PC algorithm). I believe Pearl called the networks "Bayesian" to honor Bayes, and because of the way Bayes theorem is used when you shuffle probabilities around. The model does not necessitate Bayesian methods at all.
I don't mean to be rude, but are we operating at the level of string pattern matching, and google searches here?
...You still didn't define "causal problem" and what you m
Yann LeCun, now of Facebook, was interviewed by The Register. It is interesting that his view of AI is apparently that of a prediction tool:
"In some ways you could say intelligence is all about prediction," he explained. "What you can identify in intelligence is it can predict what is going to happen in the world with more accuracy and more time horizon than others."
rather than of a world optimizer. This is not very surprising, given his background in handwriting and image recognition. This "AI as intelligence augmentation" view appears to be prevalent among the AI researchers in general.