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Re: [ontolog-forum] History of AI and Commercial Data Processing

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: John Bottoms <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:04:29 -0400
Message-id: <4A41354D.8050004@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
John, et al,    (01)

Ah, yes, I have not-so-fond memories of flipping the switches
on the 7094's until my fingers were bloody stumps. But, you know,
you work with what you have.    (02)

It seems to me that AI has long abandoned practical application
areas in favor of the theoretic work currently in vogue. The
most important split in my view is the one with Operations Research. The
queueing problems of OR were deemed to be either not sufficiently
compelling or already solved and so they were ignored. The OR
people were left to fend for themselves and now (that they have
made progress) there is renewed interest in reviewing the overlap
between CS and OR. I have always been puzzled how the big names
in AI could get away with such mammoth blunders and still maintain
their positions in the pantheon.    (03)

Clearly the future of AI, cognitive science or semantic processing
must include tight coupling with real world problems. If we look at
the evolution of humans versus other animals, we have to conclude
that our types of thinking evolved for very compelling natural
reasons, while other critters got along with walnut sized brains
for hundreds of millions of years. I don't think we have a full
understanding yet of how our large brains were justified. In
looking at commercial computing, it might be that we will only
see some major developments in cognitive science when we have
truly massive data sets that absolutely dictate processing
efficiencies. Is that where cloud computing finds its raison
d'etre?    (04)

The Natal Milo YouTube Demo is interesting and reminds us that
future successes may come from one of a number of disciplines. The
gaming world has the revenue to throw at the problem as do the
military communities. DARPA published a BAA last year aimed at
next-gen intelligent systems, and they have had some interesting
success in some areas already. Despite their occasional targeting
problems, the Warrior drones have a remarkable amount of
intelligence in them and they are being tweaked continually.
However, as with humans, they are finding that carrying around a
brain is very expensive and to shed heat they use the airplanes's
body and a find mist from an onboard water resevoir. It will be
interesting to see the outcome of the DARPA research in the next
few years, if that info is made public.    (05)

-John Bottoms
  First Star
  T: 978-505-9878    (06)

John F. Sowa wrote:
> AI is dominated by brilliant people who are totally out of touch
> with anything and everything that goes on in the field of commercial
> data processing.  There is no question that many of their ideas
> could, if properly implemented, revolutionize commercial systems.    (07)

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