Newsgroups: comp.ai
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!nntp.club.cc.cmu.edu!goldenapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!cornellcs!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!portc01.blue.aol.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!nntp.portal.ca!news.bc.net!rover.ucs.ualberta.ca!aurora.cs.athabascau.ca!news.mag-net.com!frodo.pgfn.bc.ca!news.scn.org!scn.org!mentifex
From: mentifex@scn.org (SCN User)
Subject: Re: FAQ: Artificial Intelligence Questions & Answers 1/6 [Monthly posting]
Message-ID: <E7x54w.3v8@scn.org>
Sender: news@scn.org
Organization: Seattle Community Network
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 17:41:19 GMT
Lines: 52


Gee, Mr. Barger, be a good sport.  Your nifty AI timeline is such
a jewel of historic build-up and crescendo that it must have been
irresistible for any chronicler or archivist of the race unto AI.
I use your timeline and find it very valuable.  In fact, I humbly
request of both you and Mr. Mark Kantrowitz that you please list:
1979  Theory of mind as basis for Project Mentifex ("Mindmaker").

Jorn Barger <jorn@MCS.COM> adumbrates the AI FAQ of Mark Kantrowitz:

> (note also that he doesn't cite Newquist's book, whose subtitle
> (significantly) is something like 'ego and greed in the quest for
> machines that think').

The Newquist book, heavily annotated and cross-referenced, $24.95
originally and remaindered for but a few dollars here in Seattle,
lies before me now and brings to mind the Cold War memoirs issued
by a Russian spook who accused the founding fathers of physics as
traitors who passed on atomic-bomb secrets to Russian Communists.
If you believe Newquist, AI-ers are as low a breed as physicists.
(Who else takes billions from taxpayers and makes nuclear waste?)

But I digress in my animosity towards what amoral physicists have
done to our blue planet, to the natives of Eniwetok and Bikini or
to the Downwinders of Washington state, hapless humans who should
glow with radiant pride at the achievements of their far betters.

What if Albert E. or Erwin S. had devoted himself to this puzzle:

  Hearing    Vision    Concepts Volition Emotion   Motor Output
 /iiiiiii\  /!i!i!i!\                             /YYYYYYYYYYYY\
| ||||||| || ||||||| |   +      Noo-             | |||||||||||| |
| ||||||| || | ___ | |   +      ousia            | |||||||||||| |
| ||||||| ||  /   \  |   +                       | |S|||||||||| |
| ||||||| || <image>-|-->+_                      | |H|||||||||| |
| ||||||| ||  \___/  |  /  \                     | |A|||||||||| |
| ||||||| ||         | <idea>               __   | |K|||||||||| |
| | ||||| ||         |  \__/-------------->/  \  | |E|||R|||||| |
| |d<-----||---------|---+        ____    <fear>-|->*|||U|||||| |
| ||||o|| ||         |   +------>/    \<---\__/  | |||||N|||P|| |
| ||g|||| ||         |   +      / de-  \---------|----->*|||E|| |
| || |||| ||         |   +     <  ci-   >        | |||||||||T|| |
| ||||||| ||         |   +      \ sion /---------|--------->*|| |
| ||||||| ||         |   +       \____/          | |||||||||||| |

Should we not wait a few centuries more to solve the mysteries of
physics, while we first build AI robots to relieve human poverty?
Let us all strive, as taxpayers or as overseers of disbursements,
to divert public monies AWAY from big-science physics in favor of
little-science AI, AWAY from poisoning our children's only planet
with fifty thousand years of oh-not-in-my-back-yard nuclear waste
and let us instead engage in the lofty philosophic pursuit of AI.
