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From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Subject: Industrial and Academic Research (was Re: Consciousness)
References: <3vs555$hgr@ping1.ping.be> <807514647snz@longley.demon.co.uk> <3vuekg$qof@ping1.ping.be>
Message-ID: <DD3D3w.Fnn@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: news@festival.ed.ac.uk (remote news read deamon)
Organization: University of Edinburgh
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 10:57:31 GMT
Lines: 40

In article <3vuekg$qof@ping1.ping.be> Stephan.Verbeeck@ping.be (Stephan Verbeeck) writes:
>David Longley <David@longley.demon.co.uk> wrote on Fri, 04 Aug 95:

>>Academic research is severely constrained, I believe, through lack of real
>>world, real-time, systematic data. Working on such data will,  I  predict,
>>put AI where it belongs on the map (perhaps at the expense of other, well-
>>meaning, but fundamentally misguided, professionals).

>Yes the academic world lacks the attitude that is common in the business 
>world.  However the business world itself is also to blame because they only 
>target product research and not general research.

It is worth pointing out that these are not essential differences
between business and academe, just the Western fashion. For example, I
attended a talk by some Japanese Toshiba engineers about one of their
robotics research projects, which it seemed to me was such long-term
speculative research that not only would no Western company have
thought of it for a second, but it would be pretty hard for a Western
university researcher to get Govt funding to do the same kind of
thing.

I asked them how their company distinguished between short-term and
long-term research, applied and basic, and so on. They told me they
had three categories, short, medium, and long. This particular project
was medium term research, i.e., they didn't expect it to be useful for
their company in less than twenty years.

So what do they regard as long term research? A good example is the
consortium of Japanese building and civil engineering companies who
have bought a lot of moon material from NASA, both data and actual
rocks, dust, etc.. They have used this to set up a large artificial
environment which is as like the surface of the moon as possible. Here
they are conducting research in how to build on the moon. This is a
long term industrial research project. What makes it industrial is
that they expect to make a lot of money out of it.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@aifh.ed.ac.uk         +44 (0)131 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
"The mind reigns, but does not govern" -- Paul Valery
