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From: reiter@HARVARD.HARVARD.EDU (Ehud Reiter)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: Exciting Work in AI
Message-ID: <8804140643.AA00947@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 7 Apr 88 13:50:06 GMT
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I was recently asked (by a psychology graduate student) if there was
any work being done in AI which was widely thought to be exciting and
pointing the way to further progress.  Specifically, I was asked for work
which:
	1) Was highly thought of by at least 50% of the researchers in
the field.
	2) Was a positive contribution, not an analysis showing problems
in previous work.
	3) Was in AI as narrowly defined (i.e. not in robotics or vision)

I must admit that I was (somewhat embarassingly) unable to think of
any such work.  All the things I could think of which have people excited
(ranging from non-monotonic logic to connectionism) seemed controversial
enough so that they could not be said to have the support of half of all
active AI researchers.

Any suggestions?  Please remember that I need things which are widely approved
of, not things which excite you personally.
						Ehud Reiter
						reiter@harvard.harvard.edu
						reiter@harvard	(BITNET,UUCP)