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From: Hanly@CCM.UManitoba.CA (Ken Hanly)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Business, Defense & AI
Message-ID: <571@hptsug2.HP.COM>
Date: 5 Oct 88 20:58:19 GMT
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The relationship between computers and `class' is perhaps even more
evident in the explicit agendas of important players in the AI game than
in the hidden agenda of the pigeonhole principle.

Consider the following remark by E.  Feigenbaum (Prof.  of Computer
Science at Stanford) "In Japan, the Fifth Generation Project aims to
overtake the American lead in this most important of all modern
technologies by establishing a `knowledge industry' in which knowledge
will be a salable commodity like food and oil."  (UNDERSTANDING
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, Texas Instruments publishing Dallas, l985, p.
v) So much for Unger's comment concerning not considering computers as
means for material production.

Feigenbaum is concerned that the U.S.  meet the Japanese challenge.  The
development of the field of AI has always been closely intertwined with
both business and defense interests.  The first computers were designed
to serve computational and code cracking needs during the second world
war.  Even the nutty genius of computing Turing served as part of a team
used to crack the German code ENIGMA.

In l958 the Defence Advanced Research Projects Assoc.  DARPA was set up.
Among other things DARPA established the ARPA network so that their
researchers could communicate with one another.  In l983 DARPA announced
a 600 million dollar 5 year program explcitly designed to develop and
apply AI technology to military ends including autonomous systems
-vehicles that would be able to run themselves, battle management
systems, and so forth.  The other response of the US to counter Japan's
moves involved setting up a consortium of 2l firms to form the
Microelectronics and Computer Technology COrp.(MCC) This consortium
includes many of the big corporate players in AI including Bell,
Boeing,Digital, Kodak, RCA, Sperry.  3 M etc.etc.

It is perhaps symptomatic that this group is headed by ADMIRAL Bobby
Inman stressing the comfortable linking up of the business and military
corporate worlds.

Even the beginings of AI reflect the cosy connection between business
and AI -and academia and business.  The four organisers of the Dartmouth
Conference consisted of two people from academia and two from industry
and the conference itself was funded by a Rockefeller Foundation grant.
In the area of computers and AI in particular the academic pursuit of
knowledge for its own sake and a critical understanding of society is
becoming more and more subverted, and this occurs often not because of
oppressive control by business and/or the military rather it is often
through the actions of academics themselves.  Prof.  Roger Schank was
(is?)  chairman of Yale's dept.  of computer science as well as chairman
of the board of an AI company Cognitive Systems.  He applauds the idea
of the entrepreneurial university where the university becomes linked
with outside corporate interests.

Ken