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From: loren@tristan.llnl.gov (Loren Petrich)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What Has Traditional AI Accomplished?
Message-ID: <69604@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Date: 11 Oct 90 09:22:51 GMT
References: <1990Oct7.003647.1666@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <69460@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <1990Oct9.184502.106@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
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In article <1990Oct9.184502.106@watdragon.waterloo.edu> cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley) writes:
>In article <69460@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> loren@tristan.llnl.gov (Loren Petrich) writes:
>>	That's certainly fine, but has there been much outside of the
>>AI lab? Are there many language-translator programs on the market?
>>
>
>  Well, the one that I know of is called METEO, which was developed at
>McGill and translates english weather forecasts into french (or was it
>the other way around?)  This may not sound like much, but since the
>National Weather Service Bureau must perform the translation (and over
>a large volume of documents), the fact that about 80% of what METEO
>does needs no correction save them alot of time and money.

	Pretty remarkable. I wonder how much of the work that went
into this natural-language translation program can be generalized to
other translation tasks?

	And would it not be desirable to construct a language
translator that can learn on its own, rather than one that has to be
spoon-fed all the inference rules for its operation?

	I guess I have not heard much of this work because a lot of it
seems to have a VERY low profile. But if there are results worth
pointing to, then please do point to them.

>  I recall summer work, as an undergrad, in the automated truck assembly
>plant that GM Canada runs in Oshawa.  The programs that run some of the
>robots and welding arms would have likely been considered AI ten years
>ago or so.  They also have expert systems for problem diagnosis with
>both parts and systems, and are actively working on more.  But that
>sort of thing is just not sexy anymore. :>

	Again, no mean feat. But would it be a good idea to have a
system that can learn from example?

	And about robotics, I note that most present-day models do not
have much by way of visual feedback for controlling the motions of
their arms. How much progress has there been there?

	And one may want to have some high-level way of specifying the
tasks that they are to perform. One should not need to specify each
little detail of their operation, anymore than we consciously specify
exactly which muscles to contract, and by how much.

>>	I was not insisting on any such thing. As I commented earlier,
>>I was wondering if there was any other success comparable to computer
>>algebra.

>PS.  I have never thought of computer algebra as AI before.  Why do
>you place it there?  (I'm just asking out of curiousity, not to 
>criticize.)  All computer programs manipulate data according to a set
>of rules, but I always thought of AI as programming which attempts to
>provide functionality comparible to some human cognitive ability(s).
>Is algebra a cognitive ability, or is my definition too stringent?

	I think it does qualify as AI -- it is probably no different
from any other type of expert system in that regard. Or are expert
systems not really AI?


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