eric harnden(900604)
please excuse my intrusion at this point, for what might not be a
particularly substantive contribution to this discussion, but i feel
compelled by my own combination of interests to point out that people
who engage in AI are not fools. it is well known that rule-based
systems can model (or simulate - the usage doesn't affect the issue)
only a limited subset of what might be termed intelligent behaviors.
('intelligence' is a shorthand within the community. no-one pretends that
the boxes actually think, yet.) they do, however, provide useful tools
for information processing, and in fact are alive and well as pre-processors,
frontends, output analyzers, and other adjuncts to advanced work in
neural networks. and while some of the more farfetched goals of the field
may seem meaningless to those primarily interested in 'deep' or potentially
realistic models of human cognition, they continue to provide platforms
for highly utilitarian research.
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Eric Harnden (Ronin)
<HARNDEN@AUVM.BITNET> or <HARNDEN@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU>
The American University Physics Dept.
4400 Mass. Ave. NW, Washington, DC, 20016-8058
(202) 885-2748
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