Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!sri-ai.arpa!AIList-REQUEST From: AIList-REQUEST@SRI-AI.ARPA (AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws) Newsgroups: net.ai Subject: AIList Digest V3 #132 Message-ID: <8510040817.AA02052@UCB-VAX.ARPA> Date: Tue, 1-Oct-85 02:06:00 EDT Article-I.D.: UCB-VAX.8510040817.AA02052 Posted: Tue Oct 1 02:06:00 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 5-Oct-85 03:16:41 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.ARPA Reply-To: AIList@SRI-AI Organization: University of California at Berkeley Lines: 319 AIList Digest Tuesday, 1 Oct 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 132 Today's Topics: Opinion - AI Hype ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1985 05:25 EDT From: "David D. Story" Subject: AI hype or .02+.02=.04 Depends on whether you like worth?less gadgets I guess. SEC apparently doesn't according to a recent article in Computerworld regarding Paradyne bidding in 1981. Dave ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Sep 85 08:56:41 EDT From: Herb Lin Subject: SDI/AI/Free and open Debate Date: Sun, 22 Sep 85 19:44:48 PDT From: Richard K. Jennings SDI (ie. Space Development Initiative) is laying the ground work for the commercialization of space which we will all take for granted in 2000 or so. This is most emphatically NOT the function of the President's SDI, or even that of the DoD. Maybe we would wish it to be (I would certainly prefer such a goal to the current one), but it is not. I base my observation on official statements from the President, General Abrahmson, Caspar Weinberger and others. If you discount these statements, then the claim that SDI is for space commercialization is essentially opinion. If you are willing to stay off the interstate higways, the inland waterways, airplanes and other fruits of technology ripened by close association (computers, and computer networks as has been pointed out) -- worry about the military and AI and SDI. But upon close inspection, I think it is better that the military have the technology and work the bugs out on trivial things like autonomous tanks BEFORE it is an integral part of an artificial life support system. Every study that has investigated the funding of technical R&D has concluded that spin-off is an economically unsound way to fund it. If you want to develop spin-offs, then you fund the spin-off directly, not indirectly. Technology development is a good thing, and it must be debugged before it gets into wide public use, but using THAT to justify military spending is to romanticize the military R&D process more than appropriate. Maybe the military is the only institution powerful enough and rich enough to pay for risky R&D. True enough. But that is a social choice that the nation has made; in my view that is inappropriate, and it does not have to be that way. Herb ------------------------------ Date: 24 Sep 1985 10:38 PST From: Mike Kane Reply-to: PRODMKT@ACC.ARPA Subject: AI/SDI Hype I have followed the evolution of AI for several years now, from a mere academic curiosity, to where it is today. True, I am not a participant, just an interested observer. The recent exchanges on the net regarding the commercialization of AI and AI's role in the SDI, have indeed been stimulating, and are too much to let pass without comment. The first point I wish to make is for Capt. Jennings to reread his history of American technology. Case in point: Aircraft. The airplane existed for years before the military leaders in this country viewed this technology as anything more than pure circus. Aviation technology in this country, prior to World War II, was funded and promoted as a purely commercial entity. Remember Billy Mitchell? [The Wright brothers did have Army funding for much of their work, though. -- KIL] True, after WW II, the military began to completely dominate the aeronautical industries in this country. But this occurred only after people like Douglas, Lindbergh, et. al, had proved the technology and commercial viability. There is a direct paralell with AI here. J. Cugini's comments were directly applicable I think. Before AI takes it's place beside data communications, DBMS, etc, as industry commodity segments, it must find a practical purpose in life. I seriously doubt whether SDI or other DOD related applications fulfill this requirement. It may in fact extend the technology, but will AI ever grow wings and fly away, so to speak, without someone finding a practical, dollar breeding, reason for it to exist? This is not intended as a flame directed at academia, but AI must find a path to the marketplace, if it is to survive. You can't expect DARPA funding forever. M. Kane ------------------------------ Date: Wed 25 Sep 85 00:18:07-PDT From: Gary Martins Subject: What does it mean ? In dousing a recent anti-"AI" flame [AIList V3 #126], Prof. Minsky asserts, among other things: To my knowledge, ONLY AI systems, so far, can drive cars, carry on conversations, and debug electronic systems. They don't do these jobs very well yet, but they're coming along -- and have no competition in those areas from any other kind of software. The boldness and economy of this sort of response to criticisms of "AI" have not lost their charm over the years! But, at the risk of falling into flaming ourselves, let's take a closer look. The following clauses are of special interest: (A) ONLY AI systems, so far, can drive cars, carry on conversations, ... (B) They don't do these jobs very well yet (C) but they're coming along (D) [they] have no competition in those areas from any other kind of software and, from earlier in Prof. Minsky's message: (E) AI systems are better than other kinds of software On hearing an authority of Prof. Minsky's stature assert (A), the average intelligent citizen (e.g., business magazine editor, R&D funding officer, corporate manager, housewife, ...) might well conclude: (F) There exist AI systems which can drive cars, and carry on conversations Would Prof. Minsky be comfortable with this inference? Perhaps the conclusion should be qualified, in a manner familiar to real-world systems engineers: (F') There exist AI systems which, while they CANNOT drive cars or carry on conversations (in the ordinary meaning of these phrases), CAN now perform the essentials of these tasks in such a way that they can be straightforwardly scaled up to the real tasks Do you buy this? Well, then, how about: (F") There are no AI systems today which can really drive cars or carry on conversations, but we are keenly hopeful that SOMEDAY such systems may exist Setting these quibbles aside, let's zoom in for an even closer look at the word "ONLY" in (A) [only AI systems ...]. Our intelligent citizen might take this to mean: (G) AI is the ONLY reasonable hope of achieving sophisticated goals like these On the face of it, this would seem to conflict with (B) [but not well ...], given the long history of "AI" research in these areas! But those with short (long-term) memories may be soothed by the time-honored refrain (C) [coming along ...], even without quantification. But we could be flaming up the wrong tree. Maybe (A) is really just a factual boast in modest disguise: (H) The nation's biggest AI Labs have been pretty successful in monopolizing R&D funds in areas like these. [I.e., only AI systems do these jobs because researchers in other disciplines have not been funded to attempt them. -- KIL] Whatever the other merits of this interpretation, it certainly helps us to see what (D) [no competition ...] really means. We are left with (E) [AI is better ...]. Should our intelligent citizen believe it? Like Marxist economics, (E) may be a very difficult thesis to sustain on the factual public record. Like it or not, we live in a world (the so-called "real world") that surrounds us with utterly non-"AI" software that keeps track of payrolls, arranges airline reservations, manages power distribution grids, guides missiles, allocates resources, monitors inventories, analyzes radar signals, does computer animation, assists in mechanical design and fabrication, manipulates spreadsheets, controls space vehicles, drives robots, integrates CAT scans, and performs lots of other mundane tasks. Of course, both (B) [but not well ...] and (C) [coming along ...] still apply to some extent in many of these areas, but the existing accomplishments are genuine and valuable. In fact, there are some nicely engineered non-"AI" systems that play world-class chess, and drive both commercial and military high-performance aircraft in daily operations! Even though "AI" has been around for about as long as the rest of computing, its record of real-world deployment is hardly consistent with (E) [AI is better ...], even now at the crest of the latest "AI" boom. On the contrary, this record seems rather skimpy and inconsequential sometimes, doesn't it? Could it be true that (E) is a kind of modern cult shibboleth, stimulating to believers but mostly just mystifying to the uninitiated? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Sep 85 08:21 EDT From: Attenber%ORN.MFENET@LLL-MFE.ARPA Subject: AI hype Here is an outsider's opinion regarding AI hype. The mood of a field and the tone of the technical presentations are shaped more by political pressures and events than by the morals of the researchers. As a grad student in particle physics I felt that people were a little devious in presenting results or proposals. Fortunately the audience is always on guard and the question-and-answer sessions tend to be very spirited. Probably several decades of spectacular successes have encouraged people to be optimistic, and fierce competition for machine time and funds encourages people to present their results "in the best possible light". As a researcher in particle physics I observe a much more open, even pessimistic, attitude in oral presentations and publications. This may be due to disappointing results in the early years of the field. Speakers tend to rush to present features of the data which they don't yet understand, and the audience asks questions which are intended to be constructive. And yet the competition for funds is very intense. In fact I feel that the current funding squeeze in plasma physics is partly due to underselling the current encouraging results. I would encourage people in AI to be enthusiastic about prospects for future programs (without, of course, getting caught making a statement which can't be defended.) ------------------------------ Date: 26 Sep 1985 01:39-EST From: Todd.Kueny@G.CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Observations on Expert Systems o The existence of expert systems implies practice (refinement) and physiological learning are not necessarily prerequisites for becomming an expert. o An expert system ignores the transmission loss of the expert => knowledge engineer => program => user data path. o Expert systems filter out ``feel'' (both phsycial and mental), ``intuition'', and other ill defined, illogical quantities experts use when making decsions. The motivation for these observations is derived from the following real world experience: Instead of a computer and some expert system software I will use me. I will presume I am at least as ``intelligent'' as the computer. I now select my domain: conoeing in whitewater. I will also act as my own ``knowledge engineer'' and mentally transcribe the instructions of the expert (the canoe instructor) into my memory; again I assume I am at least as good as a computer knowledge representation and a knowledge engineer. So, I should be well prepared to canoe down some whitewater rapids. I launch my canoe and within the first 100 yards or so I am dumped unceremoniously into the river by a nasty current. . . Anyone who has been involved in a situation such as this realizes the fallacy of attempting to become an expert in a relatively short time without actually experiencing, learning, and practicing within the domain. If the expert system model of ``becoming an expert'' were valid I should be able to become an expert merely by studying an expert system. -Todd K. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Sep 85 20:27:34 edt From: Brad Miller Subject: Re: AI hype and Marvin Minsky's reply In defense of my friend Bill Anderson: Compare Marvin's posting to Weizenbaum's book "Computer Power and Human Reason". He makes the point that not only is AI hype, but folks like Dr. Minsky may be fundamentally deluded [i.e. their world view that a computer can do anything a person can is incorrect]. Brad Miller miller@rochester.arpa miller!rochester University of Rochester CS Dept. Lab Manager ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com