Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!ads.com!marcel
From: marcel@ADS.COM (Marcel Schoppers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: ** Some impressions on AAAI-90 **
Message-ID: <|~0$!}_@ads.com>
Date: 7 Aug 90 20:02:39 GMT
References: <665@babcock.cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu>
Sender: Marcel Schoppers
Followup-To: <665@babcock.cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu>
Organization: Advanced Decision Systems, Mt. View, CA (415) 960-7300
Lines: 27


I attended the annual American Control Conference in San Diego earlier
this year.  In that conference there were usually 10 parallel sessions
and the proceedings weighed over 20 pounds.  When I commented on that,
I was told that people just wouldn't come if their papers weren't published.
I have often wondered why the AAAI proceedings seem to be the same size
every year.

Second comment: for much of the outside world (as I hear it from the
company my wife works for), the one and only good thing ever done by AI
was the invention of expert systems.  Since then (it is said) we have
merely been soaking up money and have not much to show for it.  As my own
interpretation of that viewpoint, let me paraphrase a comment that was made
(by a control systems person) in the workshop I convened just before the
conference: research is not about inventing techniques, it is about solving
problems.  That comment reminded me of my own occasional perception that AI
research is less about solving problems than it is about inventing techniques,
especially techniques with memorable names.  (How many papers in this year's
proceedings even mention an application, let alone a successful one?  Leave
it to someone else to fail in the attempt to migrate the ideas into practice!)
Perceptions such as these, whether or not they are quite justified, will draw
neither much attendance nor much funding.

I raise the above as hypotheses, however implausible, and leave it to
general discussion to do the evidence accrual.

Marcel Schoppers