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From: klb@unislc.uucp (Keith L. Breinholt)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What Has Traditional AI Accomplished?
Message-ID: <1990Oct10.140751.11750@unislc.uucp>
Date: 10 Oct 90 14:07:51 GMT
Organization: Unisys, Unix Systems Quality Assurance
Lines: 62

I know I'm responding to a response but I'd like to add my 2 cents also.

From article <1990Oct7.003647.1666@watdragon.waterloo.edu>, by cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley):
> In article <69367@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> loren@tristan.llnl.gov (Loren Petrich) writes:
>>
>>	I know that this question may well start a big flame war, but
>>I would like an idea of exactly what traditional AI has accomplished.
>>
>   I won't try to speak for all of AI, but I would like to through in
> my two cents worth here.  Firstly, an *exact* rundown of what AI has
> been up to since its inception would take volumes.  Secondly, I'm not
> quite sure what you're refering to with "traditional" AI.  AI denotes
> to me the study of problems spanning computer vision, robotics, speech
> processing, text understanding, cognitive modelling, pattern recognition
> (in some of its incarnations), knowledge engineering (which is where
> expert systems fit in), even music generation and analysis.  You may
> disagree with the way I've delimited the sub-fields, but the area is
> nevertheless more diverse than you seem to suggest.
> 
>>	Is it fair to say that computer algebra is the only
>>application of traditional AI that has had any widespread use?
>>
>   Hardly.  AI systems do everything from security (recognition of
> fingerprints/voiceprints/retinal patterns), police work (arriving
> at composite pictures of people from descriptions, or aging pictures),
> to forcasting what chemicals might have certain properties and 
> therefore be more worth testing during scarce lab time.

We could add to the list a host of medical instruments such as
cat-scans (sp?) and Ultra-sounds. (Both look at internal organs
without surgery) Then there are tools such as character readers, text
and graphic scanners, and the nifty little barcode readers at the
supermarket.

American Express uses an expert system to check you spending patterns
and okay or nix your purchases (The others may also, AmEx is the only
one that I know for sure.)  Expert Systems are being used to do things
such as find mineral and oil deposits, create pictures in electron
microscopes, find vacines for diseases, and diagnose obscure diseases.

For more everyday things, take a look at the car you drive, it was
assembled in part by robots, as was most of the chips in your
computer, car, microwave, VCR, stereo, furnace, television, telephone,
airplanes, wrist watch, etc.  The software that controls almost
everything in your life was more than likely compiled and written
using tools that use "AI" techniques.  (Most compilers do data-flow
and syntax checking both of which had roots in AI labs.  Any of the
CASE tools used nowdays couldn't exist without some of the fundamental
research done 30 years ago in AI labs.)

>>	I am not trying to pick on the AI field, but I really think
>>that it has not come very far over the decades that it has been in
>>existence.

For a field that hasn't come very far I'd like you to find a part of
your life that AI hasn't touched.

I think your problem is in recognizing the fruits of research done 10
to 20 years ago in "everyday" applications.

Keith L. Breinholt
Unisys, Unix Systems Group