[net.lang.prolog] Fifth Degeneration Project

lee@mungunni.OZ (Lee Naish) (01/07/85)

               THE AUSTRALIAN FIFTH DEGENERATION PROJECT



      News of the Japanese Fifth Generation  A.I.  project  has  finally
reached  the  Australian Government and they have given approval for the
spending of a ten figure sum on a  similar  project  in  Australia.   In
fact,  the  government  itself  is  providing  a  nine  figure sum (this
includes the cents).

      A major part of the project is the designing and building  of  the
MU  parallel  machine.   It has a very twisted Klein bottle topology and
will  be  made  using  Very  Large  Scale   Disintegration   technology,
fabricated on Uranium chips.  Selling points include

      Feature number 1: No proof trees.

      Feature number 2: No UNIX.

      Feature number 3: Multiprocessor  Oriented  Timesharing  Operating
                        System (MOTOS).

      Feature number 4: No eight Queens.

      Feature number 5: Automatic debugger.

      Feature number 6: There is no feature 6.

      Feature number 7: Bruce declarations [1].

      Feature number 8: Dijkstra's  On  the   Garbage   Fly   Collection
                        Algorithm.


      The first major  application  of  the  system  is  an  attempt  to
alieviate  the  so  called  softwear  crisis  -  the trend of decreasing
productivity in the Australian wool industry.  The main thrust  will  be
to  use A.I. and robotics to automate shearing.  Robot shearing has been
unsuccessful in the past but using artificial  insemination  techniques,
it  is hoped the sheep will become more uniform in size and smart enough
not to be cut.

[1] Cleese et al., The Philosophers Sketch, Monty Pythons Flying Circus.

        P.S.    The "Machine Intelligence Project" actually
                exists.  We are told the cheque is in the post.

					Lee Naish

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