I'd heard of it word of mouth, but I finally got around to reading the Wired article in which Marvin Minsky blasts the field he co-founded into smithereens.
"The worst fad has been these stupid little robots," said Minsky. "Graduate students are wasting 3 years of their lives soldering and repairing robots, instead of making them smart. It's really shocking."
On the other hand, it's the second time in the past month that I've run across Douglas Lenat's Cyc project. A friend who's into the semantic web was saying that it looked like something that just might succeed, but not to be too optimistic. AI and optimism just don't seem to go together.
Posted by jim at May 29, 2003 08:33 AMAI and optimism don't go together? I have to agree with you there!
Still grappling with that intriguing fabula stuff meanwhile....
Posted by: mark on May 30, 2003 11:07 AMYes, but I'm really only pessimistic on oddly numbered days. Today, I feel slightly more optimistic. Looking forward to your thoughts on the fabula stuff ...
Living in Austin, I keep hearing about Cyc every couple of years. Seems like it's always under a different name. I keep expecting them to go under, but hey, they're even hiring!
http://www.cyc.com/employment.html
The great thing about their common-sense engine is that it could finally fulfill the vision of computers we all remember from the cartoons of our childhood: a box covered with blinkenlights to which you ask a question and get back an answer. "Which fork do I use for dessert?" "Should the toilet paper be over the roll or under the roll?" "Paper or plastic?"
I wonder if anybody's asked it about the wisdom of going to war with Iraq?
Posted by: Prentiss Riddle on June 5, 2003 07:45 AMPR-- I've always imagined the instant a computer gains intelligence, we'd ask it such questions, and it would respond, "Don't bother me, I'm thinking about something of importance." OTOH, I used to love those handwriting analysis "computers" you'd see at state and county fairs. The lights, the reel-to-reel tapes, and all the other things that signified computers way back when. --jfb
Posted by: jim on June 5, 2003 09:07 AM