TITLE: The Manifest Destiny of Computer Science?
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 29, 2010  9:27 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
The June 2010 issue of <EM>Communications of the
ACM</EM> included
<A HREF="http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/6/92472-an-interview-with-ed-feigenbaum/">
   An Interview with Ed Feigenbaum</A>,
who is sometimes called the 
<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Feigenbaum">
   father of expert systems</A>.
Feigenbaum was always an ardent promoter of AI, and
time doesn't seem to have made him less brash.  The
interview closes with the question, "Why is AI
important?"  The father of expert systems pulls no
punches:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
There are certain major mysteries that are magnificent
open questions of the greatest import.  Some of the
things computer scientists study are not.  If you're
studying the structure of databases -- well, sorry to
say, that's not one of the big magnificent questions.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

I agree, though occasionally I find installing and
configuring Rails and MySQL on my MacBook Pro to be
one of the great mysteries of life.  Feigenbaum is
thinking about the questions that gave rise to the
field of artificial intelligence more than fifty years
ago:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
I'm talking about mysteries like the initiation and
development of life.  Equally mysterious is the
emergence of intelligence.  Stephen Hawking once asked,
"Why does the universe even bother to exist?"  You can
ask the same question about intelligence.  Why does
intelligence even bother to exist?
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

That is the sort of question that captivates a high
school student with an imagination bigger than his
own understanding of the world.  Some of those
young people are motivated by a desire to create
an "ultra-intelligent computer:, as Feigenbaum puts
it.  Others are motivated more by the second prize
on which AI founders set their eyes:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
... a very complete model of how the human mind
works.  I don't mean the human brain, I mean the
mind: the symbolic processing system.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's the goal that drew the starry-eyed HS student
who became the author of this blog into computer
science.

Feigenbaum closes his answer with one of the more
bodacious claims you'll find in any issue of
<EM>Communications</EM>:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
In my view the science that we call AI, maybe better
called computational intelligence, is the manifest
destiny of computer science.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

There are, of course, many areas of computer science
worthy of devoting one's professional life to.  Over
the years I have become deeply interested in questions
related to language, expressiveness, and even the
science or literacy that is programming.  But it
is hard for me to shake the feeling, still deep in
my bones, that the larger question of understanding
what we mean by "mind" is the ultimate goal of all
that we do.
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