Another important lesson from SHRDLU, aside from discovering that the approach of hand coding knowledge doesn't work, was how long it took to discover this. It was not at all obvious from the initial success. Cycorp still hasn't figured it out after over 20 years. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
----- Original Message ---- From: Charles D Hixson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Sunday, November 5, 2006 4:46:12 PM Subject: Re: [agi] Natural versus formal AI interface languages Richard Loosemore wrote: > ... > This is a question directed at this whole thread, about simplifying > language to communicate with an AI system, so we can at least get > something working, and then go from there.... > > This rationale is the very same rationale that drove researchers into > Blocks World programs. Winograd and SHRDLU, etc. It was a mistake > then: it is surely just as much of a mistake now. > Richard Loosemore. > ----- Not surely. It's definitely a defensible position, but I don't see any evidence that it has even a 50% probability of being correct. Also I'm not certain that SHRDLU and Blocks World were mistakes. They didn't succeed in their goals, but they remain as important markers. At each step we have limitations imposed by both our knowledge and our resources. These limits aren't constant. (P.S.: I'd throw Eliza into this same category...even though the purpose behind Eliza was different.) Think of the various approaches taken as being experiments with the user interface...since that's a large part of what they were. They are, of course, also experiments with how far one can push a given technique before encountering a combinatorial explosion. People don't seem very good at understanding that intuitively. In neural nets this same problem re-appears as saturation, the point at which as you learn new things old things become fuzzier and less certain. This may have some relevance to the way that people are continually re-writing their memories whenever they remember something. ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303 ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
