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From: jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: Re: Grand Challenges
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From: glacier!jbn@labrea.stanford.edu  (John B. Nagle)
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Subject: Re: Grand Challenges
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      The lesson of the last five years seems to be that throwing money at
AI is not enormously productive.  The promise of expert systems has not
been fulfilled (I will refrain from quoting some of the promises today),
the Japanese Fifth Generation effort has not resulted in any visible
breakthroughs (although there are some who say that its real purpose was
to divert American attention from the efforts of Hitachi and Fujitsu to
move into the mainframe computer business), the DARPA/Army Tank Command
autonomous land vehicle effort has resulted in vehicles that are bigger,
but just barely able to stay on a well-defined road on good days.

      What real progress there is doesn't seem to be coming from the big-bucks
projects.  People like Rod Brooks, Doug Lenat, and a few others seem to be
makeing progress.  But they're not part of the big-science system.

      I will not comment on why this is so, but it does, indeed, seem to be
so.  There are areas in which throwing money at the problem does work,
but AI may not be one of them at this stage of our ignorance.

					John Nagle