Artificial Intelligence: A General Survey
by Professor Sir James Lighthill, FRS
in Artificial Intelligence: a paper symposium
Science Research Council

	Professor   Lighthill   of   Cambridge   University   is    a
distinguished  hydrodynamicist with a recent interest in applications
to biology, e.g. to the flow of  blood.   His  review  of  artificial
intelligence was at the request of Brian Flowers, head of the Science
Research Council of Great Britain which is the main funding body  for
university research.
He claims little previous acquaintance with the field, but refers to
a large number of authors whose works he consulted, although he doesn't
refer to any specific papers.

	The first thing that strikes the AI reader of his report is his
classification of the work in the field into three categories, A, B, and
C.  A is applications which he likes, and C is connections to psychology
and neurophysiology which he also likes, and B stands for "bridge"
between the other two and also for "building robots" both of which he
dislikes.  He remarks that activities in B can be justified only in so
far as they make a connection between A and C.

	He makes no argument for his classification, and gives no hint
that anyone may think otherwise.  This plays a tactical role in justifying
his proposal that research in robotics be abandoned, because if this
research has scientific problems of its own, they should be pursued even
if the level of funding may depend on the prospects for results at the
present level of knowledge and talent.  Whereas if the research is only
a means toward solving some other scientific or practical problems, then
the subject may be abandoned if there are more promising ways of solving
the other problems.

	Having ignored the possibility that AI has goals of its own,
Lighthill goes on to document his claim that it has not contributed
to applications or to psychology and physiology.  He exaggerates a bit
here, and one is inclined to spend one's effort disputing his claims
that AI has not contributed to these other subjects.  In my opinion,
AI's contribution to practical applications has been significant but
peripheral to the central ideas and problems of AI.  Thus the LISP language
for symbolic computing was developed for AI use, but has had applications
to symbolic computations in other areas, e.g. physics.  Moreover, some
ideas from LISP such as conditional expressions and recursive function
definitions have been used in other programming languages.  However, it
the ideas and features of LISP that have been applied elsewhere don't
have a specifically AI character and might, but weren't, developed without
AI in mind.  Other examples include time-sharing the first proposals
for which had AI motivations and some techniques of picture processing
that were first developed in AI laboratories and have been used elsewhere.
Even the current work in automatic assembly using vision could have
been developed without AI in mind.  The Dendral work has always had
a specifically AI character, and many of the recent developments in
programming such as PLANNER and CONNIVER have an AI motivation.