AIList Digest V5 #92

[MIN...@oz.ai.mit.edu.uucp]

The term "demon" comes from Oliver Selfridge, via the paper,
"Pandemonium: A Paradigm for Learning", published in Symposium of the
mechanization of Thought Processes, November 1858. Selfridge's demons
were small feature-detecting agents, whose inputs were linearly
weighted sums of other signals, with autonomous hill-climbing learning
procedures for determining the weights. Selfridge's demons were
arranged in hierarchical networks; typical demons were constantly
active - and "shrieking" with intensities proportional to their
degrees of arousal; the nonlinear part was that certain "decision
demons" would "recognize" which of their inputs was most active.

[DAVS...@a.isi.edu.uucp]

My two cents on the Military AI issue. I totally agree with
KIL's "voice of Reason" - the only reason for the existence
of Arpanet is military sponsorship. I am currently working
on the Pilot's Associate project - and am therefore biased in
my view. Military applications such as this are excellent for
"blowing the fluff away" and finding out which AI technologies
are ready for real applications where need has been demonstrated.

Perhaps a little later, we can digress on some of those findings.
Without the military applications, who in the commercial sector
would attempt to put together cooperating expert systems
in real-time? [ One could broaden the issue and ask
"Who in their right mind would..?"]

The sad fact is that a technology in the university lab can look
very good on viewgraphs, but you would be surprised at the
back-pedalling which occurs when you offer the opportunity to
plug into a real application.

David Smith DAVS...@a.isi.edu