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From: jacob@latcs1.lat.oz.au (Jacob L. Cybulski)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: a naive idea
Message-ID: <1991May28.031425.10874@latcs1.lat.oz.au>
Date: 28 May 91 03:14:25 GMT
References: <1991May27.014857.3632@aifh.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Comp Sci, La Trobe Uni, Australia
Lines: 39

In article <1991May16.134123.6335@cdc835.cdc.polimi.it> gin001@cdc835.cdc.polimi.it (Mauro Cicognini) writes:
> It may be a naive idea, but my assertion is that artificial intelligence 
> is not worth for any economical results it may produce. In fact, it will
> always be less expensive to train a human being to do a certain intel-
> lectual job than to devise an artificial system to do the same thing.

Yes, you are right! Constructing an intelligent artificial system is usually
a very expensive tasks. It is considerably more expensive than training an
individual to perform the same task effectively. In some cases, devising the
process of designing and implementing a sophisticated expert system may take
100s or even 1000s of man-years as compared with 10s of years of expert
education and experience.

Where you are missing the point is that an intelligent system may represent
the knowledge of many experts that is too voluminous and complex for a single
person to master. Secondly that, once the system is constructed, the
replication of all the expert knowledge and skill is very quick and cheap.

So we may be looking at several millions in development and productisation of
an AI package which represents the knowledge of 100s of experts. But their
collective education and expertise must also have costed equal the amount.
The resulting product, however, could complement non-experts in their work
at a very nominal cost. Considering an average mainframe Expert System cost
at $100,000, and its use by 10 persons only, this would result in roughly
$10,000 per person.

$10K does not buy a lot of experts (even at the state education prices)!

Jacob L. Cybulski

Amdahl Australian Intelligent Tools Programme
Department of Computer Science and Computer Engineering
La Trobe University
Bundoora, Vic 3083, Australia

Phone: +613 479 1270
Fax:   +613 470 4915
Telex: AA 33143
EMail: jacob@latcs1.oz.au