Re: Minutes from Feb 21 LSE Call

Horst von Brand
2003-02-26T16:21:23Z

[Massive cutdown on Cc:]
Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>

[...]

> In 15-30 years, AIs will be a big market, a huge one. Of course, people
> said that 30 years ago and it seemed reasonable then....

It won't. Because AI is handwaving patch over hack with the odd kludge for
lack of a decent, structured solution. If the problem is important, some
solution is found eventually, and the area doesn't qualify anymore ;-)

Happened to "automatic programming", to get a program written from a
high-level specification was an AI problem, until compiler technology was
born and matured. To be able to manage a computer system required a human,
until modern OSes. Today you have machines reading handwriting (sort of) as
part of PDAs, there is even some limited voice input available. Automatic
recognition of failed parts from video cameras is routine, work is
progressing on face recognition. It just isn't called AI anymore.
--
Dr. Horst H. von Brand User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239
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