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From: litow@uwm-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: AI
Message-ID: <697@uwm-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Oct-87 10:06:21 EST
Article-I.D.: uwm-cs.697
Posted: Wed Oct 28 10:06:21 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Oct-87 04:43:17 EST
Organization: U of Wi-Milw, College of Engineering
Lines: 22

Recently postings have focused on the topic: 'AI - success or failure'. Some
postings have been concerned with epistemological or metaphysical matters.
Other postings have taken the view that AI is a vast collection of design
problems for which much of the metaphysical worry is irrelevant. Based
upon its history and current state it seems to me that AI is an area of
applied computer science largely aimed at design problems. I think that
AI is an unfortunate moniker because AI work is basically fuzzy programming
(more accurately the design of systems supporting fuzzier and fuzzier
programming) where the term 'fuzzy' is not being used in a pejorative sense.

All of the automation issues in AI work are support issues for really fuzzy
programming i.e. where humans can extend the interface with automata so
that human/automata interaction becomes increasingly complex and  
'undisciplined'. Thus in a large sense AI is the frontier part of software
science. It could be claimed that at some stage of extension the interface
becomes so complex (by human standards at the time) that cognition can be
ascribed to the systems. Personally I doubt this will happen. On the other
hand the free use of play-like interfaces must have unforeseeable and
gigantic consequences for humans. This is where I see the importance of AI.

I distinguish between cognitive studies and AI. The metaphysics belongs to
the former,not the latter.