From: hendler@cs.umd.edu (Jim Hendler)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: AI In the Year 2025 - Responses
Summary: Pretty Long message
Date: 28 Jul 92 18:56:22 GMT
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742


As promised, I have collected responses to my request for predictions
on AI (and CS) in the year 2025.  I deliver a lecture on the subject
tonight, and I profusely thank all of you who contributed.  Below are
the ones that I will be using in the lecture.  They are about 80% of
those I received, many others that had good ideas, but weren't in the
form of short predictions had to be dropped.

I look forward to sealing this list in a time capsule and hope I might
be around in 2025 to see which of it has come true...
 -Jim Hendler

<apologies if I got name or affiliation wrong, I processed a lot of
these in a short amount of time>

John Josephson, Ohio State University

Domestic robots able to do routine cleaning, including laundary and
kitchen cleanup.  I predict that by 2025 these robots will be the
basis for a multi-billion dollar industry. 

Self-guided automobiles.  I predict that by then we WILL still have
private automobiles, BUT that driving skills as we presently know them
will not be required.  It is not clear how much "general AI" the autos
will have - e.g., the ability to read road signs - as opposed to
special-purpose smarts tuned to roadways made purposely easy for them

I predict with high confidence that people will no longer have to
memorize phone numbers by 2025. .. jj

Bill Armstrong, Univ. Alberta, Canada

Robots based on adaptive logic network (ALN) technology will be trained to
perform many complex tasks which today require humans, e.g. garbage recycling.

Kenrick Mock, UC Davis
I foresee a larger scale and more unified view of AI.  
Genetic algorithms, neural nets, case-based reasoning, etc.
all share a common mathmatical foundation.  While currently
limited to toy domains, in the future these techniques will
apply to complex problems involving thousands or millions
of features.

Mark Shanks, Honeywell Inc.

I forsee being able to purchase a "friend" the way you buy typical
software. This AI-based (Eliza-like) program would be customizable
as to sex, interests, age, etc., and would include a high-resolution
animated image. Communication would be vocal; no keyboard. And its
a scary thought..........

Mark Kantrowitz, Carnegie-Mellon U.


1. Transportation: AI will form part of the implementation of new features in
   automobiles, such as automatic parallel parking, tailgating alarms,
   and route planning. 

2. Entertainment: AI will run the minds of characters in interactive
   entertainment applications based on interactive fiction and virtual reality
   technology.

3. User Interfaces: AI will be involved in user interfaces that recognize and
   generate text, speech, handwriting, and gestures. In addition, AI
   technologies will also be able to recognize and generate the emotional and
   stylistic content of such communication.

4. Information Management: KnowBots will manage the user's personal information
   database, must like a butler or secretary. Such information includes the
   user's calendar, phonebook, bank accounts and bills, and inventory.

5. Email for the masses: Electronic multimedia mail will be commonplace, as
   telephones, computers, television sets, laser printers and fax machines merge.
   Every household will have an inexpensive telephone instrument capable of
   transmitting speech, text, still images and live video. KnowBots, such as
   described in 4 above, will serve as the interfaces to such systems.


Robi Bisesarji


by 2025 computers will start writing poetry, not unlike that of keats,
shelly and rabindranath tagore.

Tim Finin, (Chair, Computer Science), Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County

In the year 2025 computer keyboards will have ended up where ever all
the Underwood's are now.  Spoken language and pen-based graphics will
have completely replaced the keyboard as an i/o device on all computers.

In the year 2025, the computer, the telephone network and television
will have completely merged.  

In the year 2025, mass-market and even *-market newspapers, magazines,
and books will have disappeared.  Individualized and custom tailored
"documents" will be downloaded to your local system (at home or the
office) for viewing, archiving or printing.

David Demers, UC San Diego

Voice recognition systems will be very good, widely implemented, and
will no longer be considered "AI".

The world's best chess, checkers and backgammon players
will be programs.  The world's best bridge players will
be human.

Dave

Afzal Ballim, University of Geneva, Switzerland


..Will be the most overused advertising slogan - "Now with new improved AI,
washes even cleaner than before."

Wim Jansen, Tech. Univ Eindhoven, Netherlands

By the year 2025 decisionmakers of large corporations will trust their
expert system over their human advisors.


John Morrill, Ohio State Univ.

I predict that in 2025, the home workstation will handle most of the household 
finances. It will recieve bills, project needed cash, send payment orders and 
transfer funds between accounts, all with out the need of human supervision.

Drago Indjic, Imperial College, London

Attentional (filtering) systems: the "coctail party speech processors"
capable of focusing attention to a single object - hence avoid
(hierarchical) search and the curse of dimensionality.

Being an extension of adaptive filtering (and strikingly close to
radar systems), it could be easily developed as a subsystem for vision
or hi-dimensional control.

Of course, there will be many technologicaly-driven developments, and
(data-level at least) parallel computers and wireless communications
will be well integrated into sociotechnological environment. A nice
example is a movie "Until the end of the world" by Wim Wenders, quite
plausible sci-fi forecast, IMHO.

Stephen Aylward, McDonnell Douglas Corporation

Neural Network Researcher :
	In the year 2025, we will be able to model the human brain.

Neurobiologist :
	In the year 2025, we will be able to model a single neuron.


Patrick Jost, TRW

Natural Language Processing that works-passes the Turing Test, does
not depend solely on keywords or brittle parsers, carries on
conversations, does translations, searches based on content; the
limiting factor will be knowledge representation.

Clark Quinn, U. New South Wales, Australia

In the year 2025, there will exist enjoyable explorable programs that
will coach people through just about any topic they care to learn
about, including creating enjoyable explorable programs....

Jim King, NCR

Tapping the resources of the mind through artificial stimulation and
embedded neuro-devices will be state of practice in 2025.  Commercial
offerings will include chemical, mechanical (micro machines), neural
and biological approaches to enhancing decision making within the
human brain - and not through external replication of the brain's
processes as today.

Anonymous

Formalizing common-sense views of human behavior will allow a new maturity
across all the social sciences.


James Franklin, U. New South Wales, Australia

Image processing will be so accurate that cancer cells will be detected
one by one, and zapped. Cancer patients will stay alive indefinitely.


Basile Starynkevitch, C.E.A., France 

in 2025 the chess world champion will be a computer AI program.
In 2025 the world Go champion will still be a human.
In 2025 automatic technical report translation will be common and usable.
In 2025 garbage collection in wealthed cities will be done by AI based robots.

T. Mark Ellison, University of Edinburgh


Adaptive learning architectures will break down the current distinction
between neural nets and symbolic learning methods.

Jordan Pollack, Ohio State University

The best AI will continue to be where the cashflow is greatest, in
video-game entertainment where artificial lifeforms populate
artificial reality.

Everyone will have a compute server equivalent to a CM5
in their basement, next to the water heater and furnace,
but it will be inadequate for anything besides balancing the
checkbooks.

Tiny robots, about the size of cockroaches(expensive) or mice (cheap) 
will be everywhere doing special purpose domestic chores, like
vacuuming, dusting, dishwashing, and folding laundry.

"Microsofts" will be the word for 3 by 5 foot color lcds which hang
on the wall and display changing artwork based on neural network
analysis of the mood of voices in the room. 

Televisions for the rich will have AI watchers built in, with enough
disk memory to delay a program 15 minutes and cut out the commercials.

AI will be used to control the allocation and scheduling of piece work
to distributed home workers, because pollution is too great to go
outside.

Doug Whitehead, Corp. for Open Systems

I believe HCI will grow in importance, through extentions of 
the Xerox PARC Ubiquitious Computing project.  We will have an 
INVISIBLE monitor located on our body that communicates with 
our surroundings, announcing our intent, and retriving 
information for us. It will learn from the owner and become 
an extention of that owner. 

An example of an unobtrusive interface with the owner: 
project icons, or visualizations into the eye, so they seem 
to float in space in front of the person (similiar to the 
"private eye" display that exists today), and watch for 
eye movements to detect preference.  

It will make us more productive, but will also
force us to acknowledge that a good percentage of 
our time is spent; piddled away in thought, or puddering
around the office.

Eric Iverson, New Mexico State Univ.

By 2025 the machines we have created will define what is intelligent
and we won't qualify.

By 2025 machines will be so intelligent that they will be able to
delude us into thinking that we solved a problem by ourselves.

By 2025 machines will be so small that they will be able to fit into a
briefcase.  Assuming, of course that the briefcase in question is only
visible under heavy magnification.

Glenn Holiday, Computer Sciences Corp.

	In 2025, we will have no big, smart programs.  We will have lots
of small, dumb programs with just enough AI to survive.  They will be
specialist agents, each taking over a specific load now done by humans.

	In 2025, people will still be debating whether we will have
built something truly intelligent by 2050.

R. Peter Bonasso, Mitre Corp.

Just like your present day Mac. You order it with whatever
sensor/actuator options you want and when it arrives you take it out
of the box, slip in the applicatons disk, boot it up and "Hi, I'm
Genie. Your wish is my command." -- away you go.

Why? Because of advances in robot architectures -- a truly
multitasking robot OS which has drivers for various sensors and
actuators and layers capabilities from safe negotiating of unknown
environments to planning a meal and carrying out the plan. Because of
active perception techniques which allow robots


Thurstan Felstead, Brunel University, U. K.


"AIs (Agent Intelligences) directed from within a Total Immersion
Information Workspace accessing a WAN (World Area Network). Time Line:
1980s - The Data Age,  1990s - Transition, 2000s - The *TRUE*
Information Age." 
 

Haakon Styri, Norwegian Telecom Research

My phone answering machine will try to behave in an intelligent
manner, but I don't know if I'll appreciate it. ("The person you want
to reach is in the shower, please press 1 if your message is really
urgent...")

Harry Erwin, TRW

The vulnerability of capitalist economies to the dynamics that
underlie panics and market swings will be eliminated by 2025 as
effective tools for predicting and controlling discrete chaos are
identified.


Bruce Krulwich, Nortwestern Univ.


In the year 2025 appliances will be able to figure out our habits and
preferences, and make it easier for us to use them in the ways we like
to.  Our lights will know when we want them on, our stereos will know
what stations we like to listen to, our refrigerators will know what
we like to drink at different times, and so on.

Ben Grosof, IBM 

1) Consumers will control even appliances as humble as ovens and
washing machiness by voice dialogue.

2) Newly built houses will actively and autonomously co-ordinate
lighting, climate control, security/alarm functions and be
re-programmable by voice dialogue in person or remotely.

Mark Slack, Mitre Corp.

Robotics reaches a state where routine jobs are more cost effectivly
preformed by robots (burger king, steel workers, high way
maintainence, etc).  The resulting unemployment rate exceeds 25% as
the displaced workers lack employable education levels.  Massive riots
ensue as the government has not anticipated the social impact of
robotic automation.  Society is further polarized between the haves

Northrop Fowler III, Rome Laboratory


Today some of us view computers as indispensible PARTS of our everyday
environment (work, play, entertainment, etc).  The logical
extrapolation is that in XX years (25?) we will have crawled into the
computer, so's to speak.  That is, the computer will become virtually
(!) indistinguishable from our environment (or vice versa!).  It will
manage almost every facet of our physical and mental well-being,
providing instant access to the "climate" of our choice.  And the
principal key to this evolution in control over our environment is:
AI!

Sorry, gotta go; have a 1960's appointment down on Holodeck 3.  Today
I get to drive that new 1957 Chevy convertible (yes, with the blonde!)
I dreamed about as a kid!


John Frank, Rome Laboratory

I predict that AI will be to the point that it will be used to
generate the designs and code for the next generation of AI based
systems across, as a minimum, all systems involving well defined limits
and operations.

David Dobbs, DD Wyndham, Canada

Intelligent devices using the technology of multiple paradigms combining
neural networks, genetic algorithms, fuzzy sets, expert systems and dynamic
systems ("chaos") eclipse the old-fashioned 'mono-culture' AI approach in
capabilities. Robots using a combination of DS, GA and FS are capable of
self-planning far more complex activity than previous robots.


Jim Hendler, University of Maryland
There is no illusion more dangerous than the belief that the progress
of science is predictable.
 Freeman Dyson, 1992
-- 
    Jim Hendler
    Department of Computer Science
    University of Maryland	
    College Park, Md 20742