MINSKY@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU.UUCP (03/31/87)
The term "demon" comes from Oliver Selfridge, via the paper, "Pandemonium: A Paradigm for Learning", published in Symposium of the mechanization of Thought Processes, November 1858. Selfridge's demons were small feature-detecting agents, whose inputs were linearly weighted sums of other signals, with autonomous hill-climbing learning procedures for determining the weights. Selfridge's demons were arranged in hierarchical networks; typical demons were constantly active - and "shrieking" with intensities proportional to their degrees of arousal; the nonlinear part was that certain "decision demons" would "recognize" which of their inputs was most active.
DAVSMITH@A.ISI.EDU.UUCP (03/31/87)
My two cents on the Military AI issue. I totally agree with KIL's "voice of Reason" - the only reason for the existence of Arpanet is military sponsorship. I am currently working on the Pilot's Associate project - and am therefore biased in my view. Military applications such as this are excellent for "blowing the fluff away" and finding out which AI technologies are ready for real applications where need has been demonstrated. Perhaps a little later, we can digress on some of those findings. Without the military applications, who in the commercial sector would attempt to put together cooperating expert systems in real-time? [ One could broaden the issue and ask "Who in their right mind would..?"] The sad fact is that a technology in the university lab can look very good on viewgraphs, but you would be surprised at the back-pedalling which occurs when you offer the opportunity to plug into a real application. David Smith DAVSMITH@a.isi.edu