Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!KLAATU.RUTGERS.EDU!josh From: josh@KLAATU.RUTGERS.EDU (J Storrs Hall) Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: navigation and symbol manipulation Message-ID: <19880905045736.5.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> Date: 5 Sep 88 04:57:00 GMT Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 47 Approved: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu To: comp-ai-digest@rutgers.edu Path: klaatu.rutgers.edu!josh From: J Storrs Hall Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: navigation and symbol manipulation Date: Mon, 29 Aug 88 22:02 EDT References: <19880824193843.3.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 36 > How much more pleasant to think deep philosophical thoughts. >Perhaps, if only the right formalization could be found, the problems >of common-sense reasoning would become tractible. One can hope. >The search is perhaps comparable to the search for the Philosopher's Stone. >One succeeds, or one fails, but one can always hope for success just ahead. >Bottom-up AI is by comparison so unrewarding. "The people want epistemology", >as Drew McDermott once wrote. It's depressing to think that it might take >a century to work up to a human-level AI from the bottom. Ants by 2000, >mice by 2020 doesn't sound like an unrealistic schedule for the medium term, >and it gives an idea of what might be a realistic rate of progress. > > I think it's going to be a long haul. But then, so was physics. >So was chemistry. For that matter, so was electrical engineering. We >can but push onward. Maybe someone will find the Philosopher's Stone. >If not, we will get there the hard way. Eventually. There is much to speak for this point of view. However, halfway through the historical life of the steam engine, thermodynamics was put on a sound basis. In Physics, we had Newton, in Chemistry, Mendeleev. In EE there were Maxwell's equations. There is a two-way feedback here: sufficient practical experience allows one to formulate general principles, which then inform and amplify practical efforts. I think the robot and the expert system are the Newcomen engines of AI. Our "science" may be all epicycles and alchemy but what we are after is not a Philosopher's Stone but a periodic table and a calculus. There was a feeling among some of the people I polled at AAAI this year that there is a bit of a malaise in "theoretical AI". My guess is that we have our phlogiston and caloric theories that can be turned into the real thing with some more work and insight. --JoSH