Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!aiva!jeff From: jeff@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Bad AI: A Clarification Message-ID: <486@aiva.ed.ac.uk> Date: 6 Jul 88 15:16:08 GMT References: <1242@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1299@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <451@aiva.ed.ac.uk> <1336@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Reply-To: jeff@uk.ac.ed.aiva (Jeff Dalton) Organization: Dept. of AI, Univ. of Edinburgh, UK Lines: 43 In article <451@aiva.ed.ac.uk> jeff@uk.ac.ed.aiva (Jeff Dalton) writes: 1 Are you really trying to oppose "bad AI" or are you opportunistically 1 using it to attack AI as a whole? Why not criticise specific work you 1 think is flawed instead of making largely unsupported allegations in 1 an attempt to discredit the entire field? In article <1336@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes: 2 No, I've made it clear that I only object to the comfortable, 2 protected privilege which AI gives to computational models of 2 Humanity. If that is so, why don't you confine your remarks to that instead of attacking AI's existence as a discipline? 2 Anything which could be called basic research is the province of other 2 disciplines, who make more progress with less funding per investigation (no 2 expensive workstations etc.). Have you considered the costs of equipment in, say, Medicine or Physics? 2 I do not think there is a field of AI. There is a strange combination 2 of topic areas covered at IJCAI etc. It's a historical accident, not 2 an epistemic imperative. So are the boundaries of the UK. Does that mean it should not exist as a country? 2 My concern is with the study of Humanity and the images of Humanity 2 created by AI in order to exist. Picking on specific areas of work is 2 irrelevant. The question will then remain as to whether there is any work for which your criticism is valid. 2 But when I read misanthropic views of Humanity in AI, I will reply. 2 What's the problem? Perhaps you will have a better idea of the problem if you consider that "responding to misanthropic views of Humanity in AI" is not an accurate description of what you do. -- Jeff