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From: doug@feedme.UUCP (Doug Salot)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: Grand Challenges
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Date: 27 Sep 88 03:23:00 GMT
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Date: 22 Sep 88 08:20:17 GMT
From: peregrine!zardoz!dhw68k!feedme!doug@jpl-elroy.arpa  (Doug Salot)
Organization: Feedme Microsystems, Orange County, CA
Subject: Grand Challenges
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In the 16 Sept. issue of Science, there's a blurb about the
recently released report of the National Academy of Sciences'
Computer Science and Technology Board ("The National Challenge
in Computer Science and Technology," National Academy Press,
Washington, DC, 1988).  Just when you thought you had the
blocks world figured out, something like this comes along.

Their idea is to start a U.S. Big Science (computer science,
that is) effort ala Japan.  In addition to the usual clamoring
for software IC's, fault tolerance, parallel processing and
a million mips (ya, 10^12 ips), here's YOUR assignment:

1) A speaker-independent, continuous speech, multilingual real-time
translation system.  Make sure you don't mess up when the
the speech is ambiguous, nongramatical, or a phrase is incomplete.
Be sure to maintain speaker characteristics (what's Chinese sound
like with a Texas accent?).  As you may know, Japan is funding
a 7 year effort at $120 million to put a neural-net in a telephone
which accomplishes this feat for Japanese <-> English (it's a
picture phone too, so part of the problem is to make lips
sync with the speech, I guess).

2) Build a machine which can read a chapter of a physics text and
then answer the questions at the end.  At least this one can be
done by some humans!

While I'm sure some interesting results would come from attempting
such projects, these sorts of things could probably be done sooner
by tossing out ethical considerations and cloning humanoids.

If we were to accept the premise that Big Science is a Good Thing,
what should our one big goal?  I personally think an effort to
develop a true man-machine interface (i.e., neural i/o) would be
the most beneficial in terms of both applications and as a driving
force for several disciplines.
-- 
Doug Salot || doug@feedme.UUCP || ...{zardoz,dhw68k,conexch}!feedme!doug
           Raisin Deters - Breakfast never tasted so good.