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From: cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What Has Traditional AI Accomplished?
Message-ID: <1990Oct11.143937.29160@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: 11 Oct 90 14:39:37 GMT
References: <1990Oct7.003647.1666@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <69460@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <1990Oct9.184502.106@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <69604@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
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In article <69604@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> loren@tristan.llnl.gov (Loren Petrich) writes:
>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:
>	Pretty remarkable. I wonder how much of the work that went
>into this natural-language translation program can be generalized to
>other translation tasks?
>

  Unfortunatly, I don't think alot is being done with it anymore.  Funding
for the sciences in general has been decreasing for a while...

>	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?
>

  Very!  Of course.

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

  Yes again!

>	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.
>
  
  It would be nice, but I think you've left the realm of traditional
AI here.  Perhaps a suitable definition of AI for your purposes is 
one I heard not long ago, "AI is the art of getting real computers
to do what the ones in science fiction do."

--
      Cameron Shelley        | "Saw, n.  A trite popular saying, or proverb. 
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