From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,915d37e7b8e0ec69 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!news.glorb.com!news.aset.psu.edu!not-for-mail From: "Bob Spooner" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: and visual library once again Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 10:20:28 -0400 Organization: Penn State University, Center for Academic Computing Message-ID: References: <1129861178.782874.87870@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1129888684.681335.230450@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1130049078.633311.55000@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1130224998.944468.133100@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: nat1.arl.psu.edu X-Trace: f04n12.cac.psu.edu 1130250030 28946 128.118.40.76 (25 Oct 2005 14:20:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@f04n12.cac.psu.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 14:20:30 +0000 (UTC) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1506 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1506 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:5925 Date: 2005-10-25T10:20:28-04:00 List-Id: "Steve Whalen" wrote in message news:1130224998.944468.133100@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com... > Bob Spooner wrote: > > "Steve Whalen" wrote in message > > news:1130049078.633311.55000@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com... > > > > > > Much the way the DARPA > > > challenge of having an autonomous vehicle drive itself over 100 miles > > > through rough desert terrain was solved: not by elegant software, but > > > by practical engineering and brute force computing. In the time-frames > > > I was referring to (50 to 100 years from now), the power of today's > > > most powerful weather simulation super computers will fit inside a > > > hollowed out grain of sand. > > > > > I think you would be surprised at the elegance of some of the artificial > > intelligence techniques that are used. Where I work, we do research on and > > with autonomous vehicles. The brute force approach simply doesn't work. > > > > Bob > > I'm sorry. I didn't mean to denigrate or downplay the work being done > in the field (or the work that was done for the DARPA challenge). I'm > not at all surprised that there is some very elegant work in AI being > done for autonomous vehicles. > > Doing the kind of hard work you do was considered unnecessary and > "brute force" by many AI pundits of the 1960's who were going to > (within 10 years!) emulate the human brain in a computer and then just > have the computer brain learn do any task a human could do. Marvin > Minsky's book I referred to was basically saying that was b.s. and > wasn't going to happen (which I agree with, then and now). > > About every 10 years or so someone from the AI community says something > similar... That's the crowd I was thinking of, to whom anything other > than putting a human brain in a computer and letting it figure out how > do something, is "brute force"(I'm oversimplifying again: it was quite > a battle for $$ and research grants and reputation and ego: thankfully > that never happens any more ). > > We may get closer to being able to emulate a human brain in a hardware > computer in 100 years, but I suspect that most if not all of the > "useful" AI work that will power the robots and such I was talking > about, will come from the kind of work you do. I still think we should > continue to learn from the brain, but I think trying to program a > hardware computer to emulate how a human brain works isn't going to > magically make a "smart" computer. > > I just hope Ada (or it's successor) is still around in an hundred years > and being used for the more critical components of the robots we > entrust our life to. Ironically the last time I did any serious > robotics about 10+ years ago, Forth was my language of choice for the > task at hand due to memory and hardware constraints. I guess that's a > part of the point I was trying to make: "hardware constraints" are > beginning to disappear, and will have disappeared completely in 100 > years. > > Steve > Well, I don't think that hardware constraints will ever completely disappear. That's because of what I call "Spooner's law of computing" which says that computing power generates the need for more computing power. Bob