Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!gatech!hubcap!mrspock
From: mrspock@hubcap.UUCP (Steve Benz)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: The future of AI [was Re: Time Magazine -- Computers of the Future]
Message-ID: <1295@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 4 Apr 88 16:25:49 GMT
References: <1134@its63b.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Lines: 42

From article <1134@its63b.ed.ac.uk>, by gvw@its63b.ed.ac.uk (G Wilson):
> In article <4640@bcsaic.UUCP> rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP (Rick Wojcik) writes:
>>         Moreover, your opinion that conventional techniques can
>>replace AI is ludicrous.  Consider the area of natural language.  What
>>conventional techniques that you know of can extract information from
>>natural language text or translate a passage from English to French?
> 
> Errmmm...show me *any* program which can do these things?  To date,
> AI has been successful in these areas only when used in toy domains.

In a real world (real world at least as far as real money will carry you...)
project here, we developed a nearly-natural-language system that deals
with the "toy domain" of reading mail, querying databases, and some other stuff.

It may be a toy, but some folks were willing to lay out some signifigant
number of dollars to get it.  These applications are based off of
a lazy-evaluation, functional language (I wouldn't call that a "conventional
technique.")

But the best part about the whole thing (as far as our contract monitor is
concerned) is that it really wasn't all that expensive to do--less than
20 man-months went into the development of the language and fitting out
the old menu-driven software with the new technique.  Overall, it was a
highly successful venture, allowing us to create high-quality user-interfaces
very quickly, and develop them semi-independently of the application itself.
None of the "conventional techniques" we had used before allowed us this.

So you see, AI has application, I think the problem is that AI techniques
like expert systems, and functional/logic programming simply haven't
filtered out of the University in sufficient quantity to make an impact on
the marketplace.  The average BS-in-CS-graduate probably has had a very
limited exposure to these techniques, hence he/she will be afraid of the
unknown and will prefer to stick with "conventional techniques."

To say that AI will never catch on is like saying that high-level languages 
should never have cought on.  At one point it looked unlikely that HLL
would gain wide acceptance, better equipment and better understanding by
the programming community made them practical.

					- Steve
					mrspock@hubcap.clemson.edu
					...!gatech!hubcap!mrspock