Various programs in the past have been very successful with problems that were tightly constrained. Sorry I don't have some examples however, I do not think this is a controversial assertion. The reason why these programs worked was that they could assess any number of possibilities that the problem space offered in a very short period of time. I think that this kind of problem model could be used in a test of a program to see if the basic idea of the program was worthwhile. Under these circumstances, where the possibilities are limited, the computer program can use an exhaustive search of the possibilities to test how good possible solutions looked. Although many problems do not have a way to immediately rate the value of the best candidates for a solution, the majority of the candidates typically can be eliminated.
An awareness of these limited successes is important because it gives us some sense of what the solution might look like. On the other hand, the application of these limited successes to the real world is so limited that it may seem that they offer little that is worthwhile. I believe that is wrong. Suppose that you had a variety of methods of image analysis that were useful in different circumstances but these circumstances were very limited. By developing programs that combine these different methods you could have a set of methods that might produce insight about an image that no one particular method could produce, but the extended circumstances where insight could be produced would be unusual and it would still not produce the kinds of results that you would want. Now suppose that you just kept working on this project, finding other methods that produced some kinds of useful information for particular circumstances. As you continued working in this way two things would likely occur. Each new method would tend to be a little less useful and the complexity that would result from combining these methods would be a little more overwhelming for the computer to examine the possibilities. At some point, no matter how productive you were, your sense of progress would come to an end. At that point some genuine advancements would be necessary, but if you got to that point you might find that some of those advancements were waiting for you (if you had enough insight to realize it). Jim Bromer ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
