I’m not sure anyone can disagree that there is over-hype of AI by pundits who claim it’s the next technological magic bullet, particularly those who subtitle their books When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. However, any article which starts its argument with “First, AI is a technological backwater.” needs to seriously look at what definition of “AI” they are using, and if they are limiting themselves to only the “building mechanical people” definition, they need to be slapped around. And then shown the ongoing research in and applications of learning, and machine vision, and planning. And then slapped around some more. Oh sure, the article later concedes that there is “narrow” and “generalized” AI, but the former is so quickly dismissed as to suggest it has narrowed itself beyond even deserving the label AI. Of course, anyone whose best slam against Kurzweil’s Ramona is: “Ramona uses natural language processing, a technology that’s been around for decades, although Mr. Kurzweil claims to have improved it.” doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously. [via RRE]
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