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From: jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures,comp.ai
Subject: Re: The future of AI [was Re: Time Magazine -- Computers of the Future]
Message-ID: <400@aiva.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 5 May 88 19:01:06 GMT
References: <8803270154.AA08607@bu-cs.bu.edu> <962@daisy.UUCP> <5789@swan.ulowell.edu> <978@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <445@novavax.UUCP>
Reply-To: jeff@uk.ac.ed.aiva (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: Dept. of AI, Univ. of Edinburgh, UK
Lines: 26

In article <445@novavax.UUCP> maddoxt@novavax.UUCP (Thomas Maddox) writes:
>	"Rigorous sociology/contemporary anthropology"?  Ha ha ha ha
>ha ha ha ha, &c. [...]  By comparison, sociologists produce a great deal
>of nonsense, and indeed the social "sciences" in toto are afflicted by
>conceptual confusion at every level.  Ideologues, special interest groups,
>purveyors of outworn dogma (Marxists, Freudians, et alia) continue to
>plague the social sciences in a way that would be almost unimaginable in
>the sciences, even in a field as slippery, ill-defined, and protean as AI.

Speaking of outworn dogmas, AI seems to be plagued by behaviorists,
or at least people who seem to think that having the right behavior
is all that is of interest: hence the popularity of the Turing Test.

>Also, if you want to say "one dead end after another," you might
>adduce actual dead ends pursued by AI research and contrast them
>with non-dead ends so that the innocent who stumbles across your
>remark won't be utterly misled by your unsupported assertions.   

Does anyone actually think the current techniques are capable of
producing human-level intelligence just by scaling up?  They are all
likely to be dead ends in that sense though they may well be useful
for something else.

Jeff Dalton,                      JANET: J.Dalton@uk.ac.ed             
AI Applications Institute,        ARPA:  J.Dalton%uk.ac.ed@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk
Edinburgh University.             UUCP:  ...!ukc!ed.ac.uk!J.Dalton