

Ask HN: What would you ask Peter Norvig? - brudolph

Peter Norvig is coming to guest lecture one of my classes. I want to be able to ask him an interesting question. If you had the chance, what would you want to ask him?
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Wilduck
I really admire Peter Norvig and have learned a lot simply by reading (and re-
reading) two of his essays: How to Write a Spelling Corrector[1] and Solving
Every Sudoku Puzzle[2].

What fascinates me about these essays is that in one, he is able to get good
results from using a simple algorithm over a large corpus of data (books from
Project Gutenberg). In the other, he is able to get good results through the
application of a clever algorithm (constraint propagation). Both of these
approaches (lots of data, clever algorithms) are used in AI. My question would
relate to their relative merit, and would be something like the following:

"Have advances in Artificial Intelligence been driven more by the discovery
and application of novel algorithms and techniques, or by an increased ability
to collect, store, curate and analyze increasing bodies of data?"

However, I would also really like to know how he feels about John Searle's
Chinese Room[3] argument.

[1] <http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html>

[2] <http://norvig.com/sudoku.html>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room>

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alexholehouse
Who has been the single most influential person in your life?

Kind of a cliche question, and perhaps not one worth asking, but I've heard it
asked of some pretty impressive people and the answer has always been really
fascinating. Probably not worth it though, if you only have one question,
especially if you're looking for something more technical.

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hodder
How can we convince people to actually adopt disruptive technologies?

-Driverless cars are fun, but will we ever see them on the road?

-Udacity has the potential to educate, but will employers care?

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daly
How can we convince programmers that literate programming will improve their
code quality and keep their code alive?

Tim Daly daly@axiom-developer.org

