Python is incredible!

[Tom Anderson]

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005, Cameron Laird wrote:

> In article <Pine.LNX.4.62.0512130045460.25381 at urchin.earth.li>,
> Tom Anderson  <twic at urchin.earth.li> wrote:
>> On Mon, 12 Dec 2005, Cameron Laird wrote:
>>
>>> While there is indeed much to love about Lisp, please be aware
>>> that meaningful AI work has already been done in Python
>>
>> Wait - meaningful AI work has been done?
>
> I richly deserved that.  As penance, I follow-up with <URL: 
> http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/ >.

I think that document actually sells AI a little short: it's true that 
little progress has been made with language or reasoning, but vision's 
actually done rather well; the recent winning of the Grand Challenge drive 
across the Mojave is proof of that.

But then, i don't think AI was ever really the goal of the AI movement - 
it was basically a time when DARPA gathered together smart, curious 
people, and threw torrents of resources at them to use as they pleased. We 
didn't get AI out of it, but we did get a hell of a lot of cool stuff. It 
was a bit like the Apollo programme, but without the air force dudes 
planting flags at the end. An AI refugee, who worked at SAIL in the 70s, 
recently told me "AI was always just a sandpit, now it's become a tarpit 
the clever people have moved on" - because it was the environment and the 
opportunity to do neat stuff, rather than AI per se, that drove them.

tom

-- 
So the moon is approximately 24 toasters from Scunthorpe.