I just skimmed though it, so excuse me if my comments is a moot point etc...
I have a book called "Computers and Common Sense" by Mortimer Taube (the name alone is entertaining). Subtitle "The Myth of the Thinking Machine." c) 1961. I read it at one point and have forgotten most of it, but the point is that some of these early books made a great fuss about somethings that are now presently possible to some extent, like language translation is treated in it, with some (now) entertaining conjectures about how difficult it would be. The point here being that it might be interesting to include some of these early anti-AI books. Mike A On 2/12/13, Russell Wallace <[email protected]> wrote: > Starting with this one: > >> http://goertzel.org/AGI_History_early_draft.pdf > >> These practical and conceptual achievements paved the way for the >> pioneering work of Charles Babbage > and Ada Lovelace in the 1800s, as they designed and sought to build a > fully programmable arithmetic > calculator. Had they succeeded, it would have been the first artificial > computer truly worthy of the name. > Unfortunately they never quite got their ”Analytical Engine” working, > due to practical difficulties related to > irregularly shaped parts and so forth. In hindsight the workability of > their ideas seems almost obvious, but > at the time their pursuit was judged insane by most contemporaries > > This is perhaps a little misleading - while Babbage's ideas were > controversial, they were taken seriously enough for him to receive > substantial funding from the British government. (It has been reckoned > that the improvements in precision manufacturing developed in the > process of trying to get the analytical engine to work, more than > repaid the investment.) > >> – its a perspective that was created > > should be "it's" > >> . Chomsky’s classic work Syntactic Structures appeared in 1957, presenting >> an incisive > analysis of natural language syntax in terms of mathematical formal > grammars – in essence building a bridge > between natural human languages and programming languages, and laying > the conceptual foundations for > computational linguistics as well as modern theoretical linguistics. > > May be worth clarifying that Chomsky's work was intended to capture > natural language, ended up only partly doing this, not enough for even > narrow AI purposes, but turned out unexpectedly to be highly useful > for programming languages? > > The discussion of symbolic versus connectionist and genetic > programming approaches should perhaps mention the terms 'neat' and > 'scruffy'? > >> based on > analogy to the humanmind > > should be "human mind" > >> The CM5 massively parallel AI computer > > While AI was the personal motivation for Hillis, there was nothing in > the CM hardware designs that particularly suited them for AI work - > indeed I would argue that on the contrary, such oddball and > restrictive designs are particularly _un_suited for AI work - maybe > just call it a massively parallel computer? > > Overall, I like it. There's a tradeoff between comprehensiveness and > brevity, and also between presenting disjointed facts with no pattern > versus going overboard in imposing the author's own views. I think > you've done an unusually good job here in balancing both of those. > > > ------------------------------------------- > AGI > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/11943661-d9279dae > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
