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From: jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures,comp.ai
Subject: Re: The future of AI [was Re: Time Magazine -- Computers of the Future]
Message-ID: <17378@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 28 Mar 88 17:08:20 GMT
References: <8803270154.AA08607@bu-cs.bu.edu> <962@daisy.UUCP> <5789@swan.ulowell.edu>
Reply-To: jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 26

In article <5789@swan.ulowell.edu> sbrunnoc@eagle.UUCP (Sean Brunnock) writes:
>industrial age, and now we are heading into the information age. The author
>of "Megatrends" points out the large rise in the number of clerks as
>evidence of this. 

      The number of office workers in the U.S. peaked in 1985-86 and has 
declined somewhat since then.  White collar employment by the Fortune 500
is down substantially over the last five years.  The commercial real estate
industry has been slow to pick up on this, which is why there are so many
new but empty office buildings.  The new trend is back toward manufacturing.
You can't export services, except in a very minor way.  (Check the numbers
on this; they've been published in various of the business magazines and
can be obtained from the Department of Commerce.)

>   For example, give a machine access to knowledge of aerodynamics,
>engines, materials, etc. Now tell this machine that you want it to
>design a car that can go this fast, use this much fuel per mile, cost
>this much to make, etc. The machine thinks about it and out pops a 
>design for a car that meets these specifications. It would be the
>ultimate car with no room for improvement (unless some new scientific
>discovery was made) because the machine looks at all of the possibilities.

      Wrong.  Study some combinatorics.  Exhaustive search on a problem like
that is hopeless.  The protons would decay first.

					John Nagle