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fifth[e83,jmc]		Review of Feigenbaum and McCorduck - for Reason

from 1983 June 27 notebook, p. 113

	Japan has replaced the Soviet Union as the world's second place
industrial power.  (Look at them on the globe and be impressed).  However,
many people, Japanese included, consider that this has relied too much
on imported science and technology.  Too much for the respect of the
rest of the world, too much for Japanese self respect, and too much too
provide for the technological independence required if Japan is to
continue to advance at previous rates.  The Fifth Generation  computer project
represents one Japanese attempt to break out of the habit of copying
and generate Japan's own share of scientific and technological innovations.

	The idea is that the 1990s should see a new generation of computers
based on "knowledge information processing" rather than "data processing".
(The first generation computers were made of vacuum tubes, the second of
transistors and the third of integrated circuits. "Fourth generation" is
an artefact of the trade press.  It was first used to refer to the IBM 370
though not by IBM which wasn't that much different from the IBM 360, but
has also been used to refer to other innovations).  "Knowledge information
processing" is a vague term that promises important advances in the direction
of artificial intelligence but is non-committal about specific performance.

	The Fifth Generation Project is the idea of Kazuhiro Fuchi
of the Electrotechnical Laboratory, a Japanese government laboratory
often compared with our National Bureau of Standards.  Fuchi has borrowed
about forty engineers and computer scientists, all under 35, for periods
of three years from the leading Japanese computer companies.  Thus the
organization and management of the project is as innovative as one could
ask.  With only forty people, the project is a tiny part of the total
Japanese computer effort.

	From its beginning the Project has been hospitable
to foreign computer scientists.  It has held open conferences in English,
publishes a journal in English, and welcomes scientific visitors.

	It is planned to
take about ten years.  They will design computers based on "logic
programming", an invention of
Alain Colmerauer of the University of Marseilles in France and
Robert Kowalski of Imperial College in London and implemented in language
called Prolog beginning in the early 1970s by Colmerauer and his colleagues.
They want to use additional ideas of "dataflow" developed at M.I.T.
and to make highly parallel machines.  Some Japanese university
scientists consider that the project has too much tendency to look
to the West for scientific ideas.

	Making parallel machines based on logic programming is a
straightforward engineering task, and there is little doubt that
part of the project will succeed.  The grander goal of shifting
the center of gravity of computer use to the intelligent processing
of knowledge is more doubtful.  The level of intelligence to be
achieved is ill-defined.  The applications are also ill-defined.
Some of the goals, such as common sense knowledge and reasoning
ability require fundamental scientific discoveries which cannot
be scheduled in advance.

	My own scientific field is making computer programs with common sense,
and when I visited ICOT, I asked who was working on the problem.
It was disappointing to learn that the answer was "no-one".  This
is a subject to which the Japanese have made few contributions,
and it probably isn't suited to people borrowed from computer
companies for three years.  Therefore, I can't be optimistic
that this important part of the project goals will be achieved.

	The Fifth Generation Project was announced at a time
when the Western industrial countries were ready for another
bout of viewing with alarm, the journalists having tired of
the "energy crisis" - not that it has been solved.  Even apart
from the recession, industrial productivity has stagnated; it has
even declined in industries heavily affected by environmental
and safety innovations.  At the same time Japan has taken the
lead in automobile production and in some other industries.

	At the same time, artificial intelligence research was
getting a new round of publicity which seems to go in a seven
year cycle.  For a while every editor wants a story on AI and
the free lancers oblige, and then suddenly the editors get
tired of it, and no stories appear.  This round of publicity
has more new facts behind than before, because expert systems
are beginning to achieve practical results, i.e. results that
companies will pay money for.

	Edward Feigenbaum is the leader of one of the major groups
that has achieved these results with programs applicable to
chemistry and medicine.  He is also one of the American computer
scientists with extensive Japanese contacts and extensive
interaction with the Fifth Generation Project.

	The present book makes two main points.

	First, knowledge engineering will dominate computing
by the 1990s.

	Second, America is in deep trouble if we don't organize
a systematic effort to compete with the Japanese in this area.
Notes:

It isn't a struggle to the death.

50 engineers and 50 lawyers

Sato says that ICOT is still too foreign oriented

Koichi Furukawa

It is a journalistic convention that in order to hold a reader's attention,
it is best to th threaten him with death if he doesn't pay attention.

What has all this too do with the United States?  Some write as if
the US and Japan were in a struggle that only one can survive.