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From: bstev@pnet12.cts.com (Barry Stevens)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Why?
Message-ID: <190@serene.CTS.COM>
Date: 18 Sep 88 20:56:11 GMT
Sender: root@serene.CTS.COM
Organization: People-Net [pnet12], Del Mar, Ca.
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markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes:
>  	  Why does anyone want artificial intelligence?
  
>     A major determinant of how fragmented science is is how much communication
>takes place.  I submit here that the information explosion is for the most part
>an explosion in redundancy brought about by a communication bottleneck.  Our
>goal is then to find a way to open up this bottle neck.  It is here, again that
>AI (especially in relation to intelligent data bases) may come to the rescue.

Along with the need to handle increasing amounts of information, comes an
increased need for performance:

   Timeliness -- the speed at which information must be processed has
                 increased dramatically. (e.g. computer console messages
                 in a commercial datacenter with multiple CPUs need to be
                 analyzed at the rates of 5 to 50 per SECOND. )

   Accuracy   -- decisions must be made at accuracies that are beyond the
                 sustained ability of human experts (e.g process control
                 systems needing 0.1% accuracy in set point values for
                 hundreds of variables set every minute for 24 hrs/day)

   Cost       -- expert knowledge must be employed in situations where
                 the presence of experts can't be afforded (e.g. stock
                 or commodity trading systems based on expert systems
                 and/or neural nets)

   Availability- most experts are fond of their weekends and evenings, and
                 make a very big deal over their vacations. AI methods can
                 make their skills available 24 hrs, 365 days/year.

I have surveyed many companies in their use of AI techniques. My personal
feeling, supported by no one else at this point, is that the "why" of AI
will be answered when the following application is implemented and becomes
widespread:

   A mid level manager must analyze a budget report once a week. He uses
   the rules he follows as the basis for an expert system: "If the
   variance is greater than $1000 in Acct 101, OR the TOTAL in Line 5
   is greater than 10% of plan, OR ... " an then delegates the expert 
   system and his rule base of 10, 15, or 20 rules to HIS SECRETARY, AI 
   and expert systems will have come of age in industry.

The big question will be answered not by robotics applications, or speaker
independent speech recognition, or writer-independent character
recognition, or even smart data bases. (Most professionals don't use data
bases), but by simple tasks, done by almost everyone in the work
environment, taken over or delegated to someone else as a result of AI. The
AI applications that do that will propogate across the workplace like LOTUS
or other truly horizontal applications.

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