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From: fishwick@fish.cis.ufl.EDU (Paul Fishwick)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: Gilding the Lemon
Message-ID: <8710301445.AA10702@fish>
Date: Fri, 30-Oct-87 09:45:45 EST
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Posted: Fri Oct 30 09:45:45 1987
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...From Ken Laws...
> Progress also comes from applications -- very seldom from theory.
> The "neats" have been worrying for years (centuries?) about temporal
> logics, but there has been more payoff from GPSS and SIMSCRIPT (and
> SPICE and other simulation systems) than from all the debates over
> consistent point and interval representations.  The applied systems
> are ultimately limited by their ontologies, but they are useful up to
> a point.  A distant point.

I'd like to make a couple of points here: both theory and practice are
essential to progress; however, too much of one without the other
creates an imbalance. As far as the allusion to temporal logics and
interval representations, I think that Ken has made a valuable point.
Too often an AI researcher will write on a subject without referencing
non-AI literature which has a direct bearing on the subject. An
illustration, in point, is the reference to temporal representations -
If one really wants to know what researchers have done with concepts
such as *time*, *process*, and *event* then one should seriously review work
in system modeling & control and simulation practice and theory. In doing 
my own research I am actively involved in both systems/simulation
methodology and AI methods so I found Ken's reference to GPSS and SPICE
most gratifying.

What I am suggesting is that AI researchers should directly reference
(and build upon) related work that has "non-philosophical" origins. Note
that I am not against philosophical inquiry in principle -- where would 
any of us be without it? The other direction is also important - namely,
that reseachers in more established areas such as systems theory and
simulation should look at the AI work to see if "encoding a mental model"
might improve performance or model comprehensibility.

Paul Fishwick
University of Florida
INTERNET: fishwick@fish.cis.ufl.edu


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