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From: jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Bad AI: A Clarification
Message-ID: <451@aiva.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 7 Jun 88 22:58:28 GMT
References: <1242@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1299@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Reply-To: jeff@uk.ac.ed.aiva (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: Dept. of AI, Univ. of Edinburgh, UK
Lines: 34

In article <1299@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes:

>AI research seems to fall into two groups:
>	a) machine intelligence;
>	b) simulation of human behaviour.
>No problem with a), apart from the use of the now vacuous term "intelligence",

But later you say:

>So, the reason for not encouraging AI is twofold.  Firstly, any research which
>does not address human reasoning directly is either pure computer science, or 
>a domain application of computing.

Vision?  Robotics?  Everything that uses computers can be called pure or
applied CS.  So what?

>There is no need for a separate body of
>research called AI (or cybernetics for that matter).  There are just
>computational techniques.  Full stop.

What happened to "machine intelligence"?  It *is* a separate (but
not totally separate) body of research.  What is the point of arguing
about which research areas deserve names of their own?

BTW, there's no *need* for many things we nonetheless think good.

>It would be nice if they followed good software engineering practices and
>structured development methods as well.

Are you trying to see how many insults can fit into one paragraph?

Are you really trying to oppose "bad AI" or are you opportunistically
using it to attack AI as a whole?  Why not criticise specific work you
think is flawed instead of making largely unsupported allegations in
an attempt to discredit the entire field?