XPost: alt.folklore.computers   
   From: tnp@invalid.invalid   
      
   On 01/01/2026 19:12, Richard Kettlewell wrote:   
   > Lawrence D’Oliveiro  writes:   
   >> Waldek Hebisch wrote:   
   >>> But are 'expert systems' really AI?   
   >>   
   >> What is really “AI”? At one point, the argument was over whether   
   >> computers could “think”. Then you had to define “thinking”, and   
   >> somebody tried to settle the question by saing: “thinking is what   
   >> computers cannot do”.   
   >>   
   >> The only succinct definition of “AI” I ever saw was: “solving NP   
   >> problems in polynomial time”.   
   >   
   > It was always rather flexible. Currently it’s a label you put on things   
   > to attract venture capital or other forms of finance.   
   >   
   Such cynicism in one so young...   
   --   
   Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early   
   twenty-first century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a   
   globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and,   
   on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer   
   projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to   
   contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.   
      
   Richard Lindzen   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)