[wplug] OT: AI

[Bill Moran]

Chris wrote:
> I have been trying to find out more about AI the past week but haven't been
> really able to find what I am looking for.  I am hoping that someone on this
> list might have at least some experience with it.  I think that the problem
> is that I am not sure that AI is what I am looking for.  I want an app that
> will be able to look at a couple different regression lines, look for
> patterns, and make predictions based on those patterns.  I haven't been able
> to decide if that's a good fit for AI or just some good old probability and
> stats.  Does anyone have some insight for me?  Feel free to contact me
> off-list because this is OT.  Chris.romano [at] verizon [dot] net

IMHO, the biggest problem with AI is that the term "AI" doesn't really mean
anything.

Look through some historical docs (for example: _The_Mythical_Man_Month_) and
you'll see that stuff that was considered AI 10 or 20 years ago is just
considered really cool code nowadays.  I remember reading an article in the
80s that discussed the concept of self-modifying code, and talked about how
it was the precursor to true AI, yet self-modifying code is all over the
place nowadays (look at any language that has an exec() function ... perl
for example)

In my opinion, the official and correct definition of AI is "software that
does something that was thought impossible before."

So, the real question (if you ask me) is more involved with what you really
need the code to do, and whether or not it's been done before.  If there are
existing algorithms to do the interpolation you need, use them.  If not,
you'll likely have to develope it yourself, and if it's impressive enough,
someone will probably call it AI.

Just my extremely biased opinion.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com