But is it AI? Vignette #3
(a subtopic of AI Toons)
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Our toons are part of our effort to make AI fun, exciting & interesting. They are intended to be used as tools to generate and promote discussion and as such do not necessarily reflect any policy, position, viewpoint and the like of the AAAI . . . or those of the person who wrote the passage upon which the vignette is based.
But is it AI? AI TOPICS explores this question through a series of vignettes we created based upon the observations of AI scientists and others.
Stuart Russell on the Future of Artificial Intelligence. Ubiquity (Volume 4, Issue 43; December 24 - January 6, 2004).
UBIQUITY: It's not easy for laypeople to know what is AI and what's not AI. Is that a good sign or a bad sign? For example, is TiVo considered AI? TiVo, of course, is a system that allows recording of TV programs, searches for shows it predicts the viewer will like, edits out commercials, and does various other tricks.
RUSSELL: Most people would call the predictive part AI, and it's partially a sociological accident of who developed those ideas and what field they identified with. There can't be a hard-and-fast line because every AI system is based on a computer program, but in practice AI tends not to be simple algorithms that are straightforward preprogrammed sequences of commands. ... There are other gray areas too. Some people would say that Google is AI. Some people would say its databases. Some people would say its algorithm or theoretical computer science.
UBIQUITY: And YOU say?
RUSSELL: I'd say it contains some elements of all of the above. It's like asking, where is the dividing line between trees and bushes or bushes and shrubs? It's not clear that there has to be a dividing line.
Related AI Topics Pages
Also see:
- Video: AAAS 2007 Annual Meeting Plenary Lecture by Larry Page, Co-Founder and President, Products, Google Inc. (available via AAAI Video Archive).
- Especially see video at 32:02 - AI research at Google & the perfect Google search as an example of AI.
- Newsmaker interview with Rodney Brooks, director of MIT's CSAIL and CTO of iRobot: Sizing up the coming robotics revolution. By Candace Lombardi. CNET News.com (May 15, 2007). "When it comes to robots, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab is one of the places in the world where the magic happens. Rodney Brooks is the Panasonic professor of robotics at MIT and the director of CSAIL. He is also the co-founder and chief technology officer of iRobot and one of the principal architects of iRobot's Roomba vacuum. On Tuesday, RoboBusiness 2007, an international conference showcasing consumer, commercial and military robots, will convene in Boston. To gain insight on what's in the pipeline, CNET News.com sat down with Brooks, one of the leading experts on robots and artificial intelligence. From his office at CSAIL, Brooks shared his thoughts on the best AI readily available today and the four things it will take for the magicians of science to match science fiction fantasies. ... [Q] MIT's Domo and iRobot's Roomba are vastly different, yet both are considered robots. What makes a robot a robot? Brooks: To me what makes a robot a robot, and as with every definition you can poke it enough until it breaks, but for me it's something that senses the world in some way, does some sort of computation, deciding what to do, and then acts on the world outside itself as a result. ... [Q] What do you think are the greatest achievements in AI right now? Brooks: I think our whole lives are surrounded by artificial intelligence, but we don't think of it that way. Google--you know, all the techniques that Google uses."
