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AIList Digest Volume 3 Issue 158
AIList Digest Wednesday, 30 Oct 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 158
Today's Topics:
Opinion - AI Hype,
AI Tools - LISP Workstations
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Date: Mon 28 Oct 85 08:42:30-EST
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN@MIT-XX.ARPA>
Subject: AI Hype
In response to David Throop's comment:
The fears seem a bit overblown to me. I've gone through the professional
employment adds in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal over the last
weeks. I didn't notice ANYBODY advertising for hotshots in AI, Rule Based
programming, LISP etc. The Austin American Statesman had one mention, but
just the "it would also be nice if the candidate had some experience in..."
form, what they were really looking for was UNIX.
Experience demonstrates that hype is in greatest abundance when lots of
money is involved. Therefore recruiting is not the place where you'd expect
to find hype; after all, these ads hope to appeal to intelligent people.
There have certainly been plenty of AI-related ads at MIT, though.
The reason for this is quite simple: when applying for government
research contracts, companies must list people qualified to work on
the project. These companies are facing shortages; they often put
each AI person on as many as 3 proposals. Sadly, many companies
recruit here to buy contract winning power. Regardless of a person's
programming ability, his or her MIT affiliation wins contracts.
I do believe that you've picked up on a trend, though: the hype is
decreasing. There has been an academic reaction against such hype. But the
hype persists where no reaction has occurred: where reaction is
self-censored by monetary interest in AI.
For real hype, go to IJCAI or read some publication that appeals to defense
markets (Defense Electronics, etc.); it's the military that has the money.
I sympathize with your perspective; I recently would have agreed. As
undergraduates, we are often shielded from the realities of military
domination of our work, because our professors (rightfully) are
uncomfortable with it. Please forward this to your concerned CS professor.
Rich (cowan@mit-xx)
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Date: Mon, 28 Oct 85 11:44 EST
From: "Steven H. Gutfreund" <gutfreund%umass-cs.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: Damage from AI Hype
David Throop in AI-List V3 #156 mentions that he has not seen much damage
from the AI hype to other areas of CS work. This may be true if you
look at the commercial cs field (as he did with the New York Times and
Texas Austin American) But I had some personal experiences in the
last year that indicate to me that it has had a significant effect
on CS RESEARCH LABS.
I went to several research labs in the last year (DEC, MCC, Siemens,
Tektronix, HP, NRL) looking for a research appointment. (I wanted to
put off my PhD work for a little while). This process started in
February, and it was about this time that the Industry down-turn
became severe. Naturally the first areas affected was expansion of
research groups hiring. This meant that most groups that were able
to get open req's, were targeting them to AI slots, since the companies
were perceiving that they "had to get into AI" or be left behind.
Needless to say, I did not find a satisfactory position, nor did
3 other New PhD's in software engineering here, who decided it would
be better to continue as Post-Docs. I am beggining to see a situation
that is defining CS research as AI research, especially when one
looks at DARPA and NSF funding.
This need "to get into AI or be left behind" is out of control. I have
a Tektronix Smalltalk machine that I obtained as a donation to do my
Thesis work. (smalltalk based). Next week a bunch of executives from
the local power company (a small outfit called Western Mass Elec)
is coming here to see my work because it is "ON AN AI Machine". You
see they have decided that they have to get into AI or be left behind
so these executive officers are dragging out their EDP computing staff
to see an AI machine and to get them to see the AI LIGHT! (I am
going to feel very bad when I tell them I do Smalltalk, not AI).
Don't these people have a better use for the scarce programming talent?
This all reminds me of the standard IBM hard-sell techniques of the
Thomas J. Watson days. Sell IBM to the top executives. Then force
those those poor system programmers to learn/use OS-360. If you sell
to the top, you can ignore the complaints of the knowlegable programmers
below who will complain about the bestiality of the system.
Speaking of bestiality, when at DEC I talked to the R1/XCON people.
I saw this project when I worked at DEC 4 years ago. It now takes 18 people
to maintain it (I was part of an operating system group that kept the
whole OS, and utilites going with 6, and we did developement too!)
Compare the functionality.
- Steven Gutfreund
gutfreund@umass.csnet
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Date: 24 Oct 85 14:53:06 EDT (Thu)
From: Liz Allen <liz@tove.umd.edu>
Subject: Re: LISP Workstations
I'd like to point out a couple things that made lisp machines hard
for me to learn -- that didn't quite coincide with the things that
dndobrin@athena.mit.edu was suggesting. My background was strong
in running Franz under Berkeley Unix and using the vi editor there.
I'd already been maintaining the Maryland Franz Lisp environment
for a couple years or so -- and that includes a flavors package.
Lisp machine lisp was not a big problem.
I was using a Symbolics machine in a place where there was only
one of them and no one to give me any pointers -- or even much of
a lispm-init file... I expected some learning time, but it was
*much* harder to learn that I ever expected... Let me give some
examples of problems I had. I should preface this by saying that
I do like to use the machine now that I've gotten more comfortable
with it, but...
I was using "system f" to look at the file system (I hadn't found
dired yet) and using the menu stuff pretty successfully. I was
missing the notion of current working directory, but I was living
with that (I hadn't figured out how to avoid typing long names
yet). What I really needed was to see the files that were listed
off the bottom of the screen... I tried going to the last file on
the screen, but couldn't persuade the screen to scroll with a cr
or anything. I'd seen scroll bars briefly before and wanted one
of those, but there wasn't one on the screen so I wasn't sure I
could use one there was for the window. I tried to look up
how to scroll by looking under "window" in the documentation, but
only found info on creating windows... I lived without scrolling
for a while by closing and opening directories a lot and using ^S
in emacs. Then, one day, the scroll bar suddenly appeared -- and
then disappeared. But I wasn't sure what I'd done to get it. I
experimented a little, but since I was neatly keeping the mouse
within the window, I couldn't get the scroll bar back. I got it
by accident one or two more times before I figured out that running
the mouse into the left margin of the window would get it. Now,
wouldn't a little documentation in some obvious place about how to
*use* existing windows be a great help?
The other big problem I had was in using emacs -- I learned about
apropos pretty quickly, but it was not a lot of help. My favorite
example is when I wanted to pick up some text without modifying
the existing buffer. I tried apropos on "pick" which gave me
nothing except the all too familiar single line "Done". Then I
tried "yank" which told me how to put it back down again... (Yank
in vi is how to pick up text and put it in a register...) That
did give me the correct idea that I wanted to put something in the
kill ring, so I did an apropos on "kill", but that didn't help.
"Copy region" (M-W) was the command that I was looking for -- I
stumbled across it by accident much later. My problem was vocabulary
-- I knew the basic concepts, but it was hard to find out what the
names for them were. I didn't have an emacs reference card (we
didn't seem to have one with the Symbolics documentation). The
emacs manual was too much reading for too little new info; it tends
to assume you don't know anything about an editor. And the index
is a lot like apropos -- you have to know the vocabulary. I finally
decided that an apropos on something like "region" would probably
be a good way to learn emacs verbs, but I had already learned enough
to get by so never tried it.
Some specific responses to dndobrin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU:
LISP machines are, in my experience, pretty well
designed (at least by comparison with the hodgepodge in
UNIX), and their documentation is, in most places, very
good.
The documentation is good if you either already know the vocabulary
or have someone who can tell you the right word for what you want.
In UNIX, at least, apropos matches on descriptions of a command as
well as the name of the command (though just using the name of the
command under UNIX would be useless...). That would have helped
me -- the apropos on "kill" would have given me copy region then.
And, as I said above, some basic stuff on *using* windows would
have been nice...
Then why is it so hard to learn? I think learning a
complex system is very much like learning to play a complex
game.
I'm not sure I like your game analogy -- why do you need a challenge
to use a tool? It can be fun to learn, but I think you probably
have enough of a challenge just debugging your application. It's
not supposed to be you against the machine where the machine is
trying to keep you from getting your program to run... (I know
you didn't mean that.)
Mostly, [new users] learn from other people.
That's a good way to learn, but documentation ought to be able to
stand alone.
Whenever you have many different things to do and the optimal
move is not at all clear (or even calculable), you have to
have some way of zeroing in on the close-to-optimal solutions.
That wasn't the issue. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. There
are times when a way to do something on one machine isn't even
appropriate for the other machine, but I had an appropriate solution
in mind in both of my examples up there. I just didn't know how
to use the mouse, etc, to accomplish it.
So, I would argue, the solution to Cugini's problem
is to get Tatem to hang out over there for about three
months. Maybe two.
I would recommend taking a course -- I haven't taken any (by the
time they were offered, I was already more or less comfortable with
the machine) so I don't know what levels are available -- or joining
a Local Symbolics Users' Group. Otherwise, you can waste a lot of
time searching documentation, etc, for rather obvious things.
But even with good documentation and design, at some point,
there you are on level 23, a griffin on one side, a dragon,
on the other, 88 hit points, strength of 24, a +2, +2
two-handed sword, a wand of cold, and a wand of magic
missile. What do you do?
You didn't say what kind of armor you have! But I think you're
an expert by then... Anyway, I'm not quite sure I follow the
analogy -- I already knew how to debug programs if that's what you
mean. But knowing what options are available (eg that you can
wield a sword) and knowing how to do them (press the "w" key and
do a menu select) is something the documentation should tell you
without you needing to know the word "wield"; you should be able to
find the info under "sword"...
-Liz Allen
liz@tove.umd.edu or liz@maryland.arpa
seismo!umcp-cs!tove!liz
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End of AIList Digest
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