I think that's an insightful summary which really matches very well my experience of people doing academic research on AI. There are really exceptionally few of the "hard core" people who are just relentlessly persuing it year after year. Many people doing computer science courses take an interest for a year or two, and then decide its too hard and go on to do more sensible things such as database programming instead, which is more likely to pay the bills and give you a respectable career.
- Bob
On 13/09/06, Shane Legg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
This is a question that I've thought about from time to time. The conclusion
I've come to is that there isn't really one or two reasons, there are many.
Surprisingly, most people in academic AI aren't really all that into AI.
It's a job. It's more interesting than doing database programming in
a bank, but at the end of the day it's just a job. They're not out to
change the world or do anything amazing, it's hard enough just trying
to get a paper into conference X or Y. It's true that they are skeptical
about whether AI will make large progress towards human level
intelligence in their life times, however I think the more important point
is that they simply don't even think about this question. They're just not
interested. I'd say that this is about 19 out of every 20 people in academic
AI. Of course there are thousands of people working in academic AI
around the world, so 1 out of 19 is still a sizable number of people in total.
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