Re: John McCarthy R.I.P.

[RichD]

On Nov 9, RichD <r_delaney2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> McCarthy was also one of those responsible for the original
> 'thinking machines' hype; "we'll have electronic brains
> any day now".  And it succeeded - federal $$$ poured
> in to the computer engineers at the big research
> schools, as MIT, Stanford et al. became branches of
> the Pentagon.

And, with beautiful timing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/creating-artificial-intelligence-based-on-the-real-thing.html

"IBM, Cornell, Columbia, the University of Wisconsin,
and U. of California, Merced...
The project has been encouraging enough that in
August it won a $21 million round of government
financing from DARPA, bringing the total to $41 million"

Can I call em, or can I call em?

"But since 2008, the project itself has evolved, becoming more
focused, if not scaled back... These days at the
IBM. Almaden Research Center, there is not a lot of
talk of reverse-engineering the brain.
Wide-ranging ambitions that narrow over time,
Dr. Modha explained, are part of research and discovery,
even if his earlier rhetoric was inflated or misunderstood"

hahahahahahaaa!

But the project is already a sucess, to the
tune of $41 million - that's not a narrowing,
but an expansion, from $20 million -

Old french proverb: plus ca change, plus ca
reste le meme.

--
Rich