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From: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What actually is AI?
Message-ID: <2982@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 7 Sep 90 00:13:56 GMT
References: <90241.112651F0O@psuvm.psu.edu> <90243.142616F0O@psuvm.psu.edu> <6560@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de>
Reply-To: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Organization: Dept of AI, Edinburgh University, UK.
Lines: 29

In article <6560@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de> powers@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de (David Powers AG Siekmann) writes:

>F0O@psuvm.psu.edu writes:

>>     In following the threads of my original posting, it seems that there
>>is not one definition of what AI is.  However, what my original question
>>was is, what is it that makes one program an AI one, and another one non-AI?

As Brian Yamauchi has pointed out, it may well be rather silly expecting
a *program* to display intelligence. 

But, as David Powers points out:

>the psychological perspective:
>
>	to build systems to do the things we ourselves can do to help
>	us to understand our intelligence

In other words, AI is a label properly applied at the moment to research
activity rather than artefacts (such as computer programs or robots) --
because we currently can't make any (artificially) intelligent
artefacts. So by this definition there is nothing in a *program* which
makes it AI or not; what makes a program AI or not is whether it taught
its author anything original and useful about the nature of
intelligence.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aipna   031 667 1011 x2550
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK