Xref: utzoo comp.society.futures:397 comp.ai:1500
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!simon
From: simon@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Simon Brooke)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures,comp.ai
Subject: Re: The future of AI [was Re: Time Magazine -- Computers of the Future]
Message-ID: <492@dcl-csvax.comp.lancs.ac.uk>
Date: 31 Mar 88 09:18:18 GMT
References: <8803270154.AA08607@bu-cs.bu.edu> <962@daisy.UUCP> <5789@swan.ulowell.edu>
Reply-To: simon@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Simon Brooke)
Organization: Department of Computing at Lancaster University, UK.
Lines: 51

In article <5789@swan.ulowell.edu> sbrunnoc@eagle.UUCP (Sean Brunnock) writes:
>In article <962@daisy.UUCP> klee@daisy.UUCP (Ken Lee) writes:
>>What do people think of the PRACTICAL future of artificial intelligence?
>>
>>Is AI just too expensive and too complicated for practical use?  I
>>
>>Does AI have any advantage over conventional programming?  
>
>   Bear with me while I put this into a sociological perspective. The first
>great "age" in mankind's history was the agricultural age, followed by the
>industrial age, and now we are heading into the information age. The author

Oh God! I suppose the advantage of the net is that it allows us to betray
our ignorance in public, now and again. This is 'sociology'? Dear God!

>   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. 

And here we really do have God - the General Omnicompetent Device - which
can search an infinite space in finite time. (Remember that Deep Thought
took 7 1/2 million years to calculate the answer to the ultimate question
of life, the universe, and everything - and at the end of that time could
not say what the question was).

Seriously, if this is why you are studying AI, throw it in and study some
philosophy. There *are* good reasons for studying AI: some people do it in
order to 'find out how people work' - I have no idea whether this project
is well directed, but it is certain to raise a lot of interesting
problems. Another is to use it as a tool for exploring our understanding
of such concepts as 'understanding', 'knowledge', 'intelligence' - or, in
my case, 'explanation'. Obviously I believe this project is well directed,
and I know it raises lots of of interesting problems...

And occasionally these interesting problems will spin off technologies
which can be applied to real world tasks. But to see AI research as driven
by the need to produce spin-offs seems to me to be turning the whole
enterprise on its head.


** Simon Brooke *********************************************************
*  e-mail : simon@uk.ac.lancs.comp                                      *
*  surface: Dept of Computing, University of Lancaster,  LA 1 4 YW, UK. *
************************************************************************* 
-- 
** Simon Brooke *********************************************************
*  e-mail : simon@uk.ac.lancs.comp                                      *
*  surface: Dept of Computing, University of Lancaster,  LA 1 4 YW, UK. *
*************************************************************************