

Whatever happened to Artificial Intelligence? - JimEngland
http://edge.networkworld.com/research/2008/062308-artificial-intelligence.html

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dhs
On one page: [http://edge.networkworld.com/cgi-
bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend...](http://edge.networkworld.com/cgi-
bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=/export/home/httpd/htdocs/research/2008/062308-artificial-
intelligence.html&pagename=/research/2008/062308-artificial-
intelligence.html&pageurl=http://www.networkworld.com/research/2008/062308-artificial-
intelligence.html&site=software)

I hate those multi-page ad-pushers (even with adblock - the clicking
requirement is just annoying). It would be nice if submitters would check
whether there's a one-page option available, and use that link if it is.

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dhs
What happened to AI depends on who you ask. If it's Peter Norvig during his
recent startup school talk <[http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/peter-
norvig-at-start...](http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/peter-norvig-at-
startup-school-08) > he pointed out advances in image recognition, language
translation and driverless cars as examples that AI research is already
succeeding. "Now if you only define success as 'Can we duplicate a human?' -
well, maybe that's a harder goal. On the other hand, I've done that, too - I
have two kids, and they're pretty smart."

If you ask Kevin Warwick, a.k.a. Captain Cyborg, who hosts this year's Loebner
Prize Contest at Reading University, a machine might pass the Turing test a
little more than four months from now: "I believe machines are getting
extremely close - it would be tremendously exciting if such a world first
occurred in the UK, in Reading University in 2008. This is a real
possibility." Yes, he really said that
<[http://www.reading.ac.uk/research/Highlights-
News/featuresne...](http://www.reading.ac.uk/research/Highlights-
News/featuresnews/res-news-loebner.asp) >.

Then there are the Artificial General Intelligence guys, like Ben Goertzel,
Eliezer Yudkowsky, Pei Wang. Roughly, they claim we're getting there, agree
that everybody else is doing it wrong, but can't agree on which of them is
doing it right. But wait, even Doug Lenat is still in the game; go watch his
Google presentation
<[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7704388615049492068...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7704388615049492068&q=engedu)
>.

And then there are those who think that AI is a medium ("Expressive AI"), and
that the most interesting applications are in videogames like "Spore" and
interactive dramas like "Facade". That's what interests me most, personally.
Well, I keep track on all the other stuff, too, but I see that also from the
AI-as-medium angle, not from a the-singularity-is-coming angle.

Oh yea, and then the article quotes a "futurist" called Daniel Burros: "The
first application of successful AI was in the financial services industry for
loan qualifications. Loan qualification went from one to two weeks down to
minutes." A qualification that struck me as kinda subprime, I must say.

