stefik.pa@XEROX.ARPA (08/01/84)
DARPA's Strategic Computing initiative is going to be a major source of
funding for AI research (as well as other Computer Science research) in
the next several years. The project has been hailed as "just in time"
by people concerned with the levels and directions of funding for
research in Computer Science. It has also attracted the criticism of
those who are worried about the effect of military goals on funding, or
about dangers of trying to guide research too much.
Next Friday morning at the AAAI conference in Austin, there will be a
panel session during which several members of the DARPA staff will
present goals, ideas, and scales of this program. The presentation
will be followed by a question and answer period with me as moderator.
Some of the questions will come "live" from the audience.
Because the SC project will effect our research community in many ways,
I would like to make sure that the questions address a broad enough
range of issues. To this end I am now soliciting questions from the
community. I will select a sampling of "sent-in" questions to try to
provide a balance across issues of concern to the community -- anything
from funding levels, to research objectives, to 5th generation
comparisons, to the pace of the research, to expectations by the
military, to statements that have appeared in the press, etc.
Please send questions to me -- Stefik@Xerox.Arpa. Keep them short. I
don't want to wade through long paragraphs in search of a coherent
question. Think of questions that could fit easily on a 35 mm slide --
say 25 words or so. I expect to choose from these sent-in questions for
about half of the Q/A period.
Mark