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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: Common Sense and Expert Systems
Message-ID: <480@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Jul-86 16:40:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.480
Posted: Fri Jul 18 16:40:41 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Jul-86 04:20:52 EDT
Reply-To: ames!aurora!eugene
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Lines: 37
Approved: taylor@hplabs
Reference: <429@hplabsc.UUCP>


This article is from Eugene miya <ames!aurora!eugene>
 and was received on Thu Jul 17 19:19:17 1986
 
> From mit-eddie!mck-csc!bmg (B. Gunther);
> 
>  Why can't the database be huge?

Because if we have learned anything over the past 30 years it's that
size is not the only issue.  Structure another issue.  There are others
but we don't know them all.

>  Who is to say that large teams of programmers can't instill in one 
>  massively parallel and *huge* machine much of that common sense?

People are trying this.  Again, size is only one issue.  Parallelism is
a convenient buzz word.  Tell me how to build a parallel machine.
People cannot even agree how to put two processors together.  I kid you
not.

>  Once the computer/complex is large enough, why not give it robot sensors 
>  which can interact with the world and allow it to "learn" and watch what 
>  others do?

This was tried.  The problem is that we don't understand learning.
This is where logic and common sense and the natural world clash.
Give Aristole a computer, and you would find it clash with Galileo.
"But that's what I saw [or heard, or felt]" is a version of our
own limitations.

>  I'm not saying it necessarily possible currently (given both technology
>  and resources people are willing to devote to the subject), but who is
>  to say that it's impossible?

I for one won't.  We have to study the problem more.  The young have to
goad the old.  Go do it.

>      Benrie Gunther