I'm sure that those highly prominent librarians are up-to-date on the
latest accomplishments in the field of AI. I used to be an embedded
software engineer and would occasionally run across an article about
AI. Maybe as a software engineer I tend to be more skeptical, but my
impression is that, while AI has made great progress in robotics and
vision problems, the problems of natural languages are the most
difficult to solve.
Take this example:
http://start.csail.mit.edu/
I asked it "who is david johnson?" It understands the question, but
take a look at the limited results. Also note the examples of the
*kinds* of questions that it *can* answer.
Then there is the related field of speech recognition. I'm sure most
of you have seen the video of the latest and greatest speech
recognition system for Windows Vista. Even ELIZA was better than this.
In my experience, the fulfillment of the big promises of AI are always
"just 5 or 10 years" away. When the problem set is finite and
well-defined, as in chess, we can build a system that appears to mimic
human behavior. But when we stray from those boundaries, things get
fuzzy at best. In my opinion, AI will never (*should* never) be more
than a supplement to human intelligence, never a replacement for it.
Sharon
On 9/5/07, Weinheimer Jim <j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu> wrote:
> > On 9/5/07, Alexander Johannesen wrote:
>
> > I can't speak for CS people (although I understand I'm now classified
> > as such?) but this has never, ever been my goal. In fact, it's been
> > stated over and over that without library specialists in library
> > systems none of the proposed ventures would have any cultural nor
> > growing value. In fact, I share your concern, but I can't say I've
> > seen it proposed here nor elsewhere in the library world.
>
> That is quite heartening, but I have heard it many times for quite awhile, including from some highly prominent librarians. One of the latest papers that has created a furor at least on the AUTOCAT list is Karen Calhoun's paper "The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its integration with Other Discovery Tools" written for the Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0605/catalog.html.
>
> Jim Weinheimer
>
--
Sharon M. Foster, B.S., J.D., 0.58 * (MLS)
F/OSS Evangelist
Cheshire Public Library
104 Main Street
Cheshire, CT 06410
http://www.cheshirelibrary.org
My library school portfolio: http://home.southernct.edu/~fosters4/
My final project for ILS655, Digital Libraries:
http://www.vsa-software.com/ils655
Any opinions expressed here are entirely my own.
Received on Wed Sep 05 2007 - 07:50:58 EDT