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From: rej%Cornell@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: The AI Challenge
Message-ID: <13837@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 19-Nov-83 09:22:42 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.13837
Posted: Sat Nov 19 09:22:42 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Nov-83 02:23:08 EST
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From:  rej@Cornell (Ralph Johnson)

The recent discussions on AIlist have been boring, so I have another
idea for discussion.  I see no evidence that that AI is going to make
as much of a change on the world as data processing or information
retrieval.  While research in AI has produced many results in side areas
such as computer languages, computer architecture, and programming
environments, none of the past promises of AI (automatic language
translation, for example) have been fulfilled.  Why should I expect
anything more in the future?

I am a soon-to-graduate PhD candidate at Cornell.  Since Cornell puts
little emphasis on AI, I decided to learn a little on my own.  Most AI
literature is hard to read, as very little concrete is said.  The best
book that I read (best for someone like me, that is) was the three-volume
"Handbook on Artificial Intelligence".  One interesting observation was
that I already knew a large percentage of the algorithms.  I did not
even think of most of them as being AI algorithms.  The searching
algorithms (with the exception of alpha beta pruning) are used in many
areas, and algorithms that do logical deduction are part of computational
mathematics (just my opinion, as I know some consider this hard core AI).
Algorithms in areas like computer vision were completely new, but I could
see no relationship between those algorithms and algorithms in programs
called "expert systems", another hot AI topic.

  [Agreed, but the gap is narrowing.  There have been 1 or 2 dozen

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