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C00002 00002	THE PRESENT SCIENTIFIC SITUATION IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
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THE PRESENT SCIENTIFIC SITUATION IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE


	The purpose of the present memorandum is to tell how I see the present
situation in AI independent of the problem of support.  Any policy for government
(in particular ARPA) support of AI will ultimately be disappointing if it doesn't
take into account the actual scientific situation.

	1. It will ultimately be possible to make artificial intelligences
capable of any intellectual task humans can do, but doing it faster,
more reliably, and taking into account more information.  The evidence on this
point has not changed appreciably in the last twenty years.  Our confidence in
it is based on the general principle that intelligence is a mechanism and
that it is possible to understand and implement on a computer any mechanism.

	2. It will be possible to prevent artificial intelligence from getting
out of hand if people want to do so.  There will be no advantage to anyone
in producing an uncontrollable artificial intelligence even under conditions
of human conflict.  Therefore, while the potential use of artificial intelligence
in human conflict, like the use of any other technology has dangers, it is less
dangerous than nuclear or biological technology in this respect.  The main danger
is its successful use by the bad guys in some conflict situation.

	There is little that can or should be done about this now, because
technology for making sure that artificial intelligence doesn't get out of hand
should be based on increased understanding of the mechanisms of intelligence.

	3. Understanding intelligence remains an extremely difficult scientific
problem.  No-one understands it well enough to define a development program
with a substantial probability of producing high intelligence in a specific
time.  The difficulty is probably of the same magnitude of that of producing
an artificial animal using the DNA genetic mechanisms that will have specified
properties and breed true.  (These problems are not especially related; I merely
wished to give the reader a way of calibrating my estimate of the difficulty).

	4. Progress in the theory of artificial intelligence has been disappointingly
slow, but the situation is no worse than in other slow scientific fields
like genetics before the DNA breakthrough or embryology or the present situation
in high energy physics.

	In my opinion, this is mainly because wrong or inadequate methodological
ideas have prevented people who would like to do theory from working on the
right problems.  I still believe that the road to success lies in separating
the epistemological from the heuristic problems and concentrating initially on
the former.  This is substantially as proposed in my papers of 1959, 1963, and
1968.  Regrettably, I haven't convinced many others to work in this direction,
but I think the situation is improving.

	Specifically, I think that much present work is misdirected, but I do
not advocate that this meeting or ARPA take a position on these scientific
issues.  Rather they should be settled in the traditional way issues are
settled in the scientific community.

	5. The problem of vision is mainly separable from the main problem
of artificial intelligence.  It is also a major scientific problem, and
a development program to reach human or primate capability cannot promise
success at present.

	6. The present state of vision research while not within development
range of human capability, is probably within development range of capability
of useful industrial, consumer (the car), and military capability.  It may
be within development range of cost-effective capability in some of these
areas.