Re: Cautionary Note (was): AI::GA

Kent Paul Dolan wrote in news:misc.misc on Mon, 8 Sep 2003:

> Recommending your self-published book as a serious 
> work for a classroom was a much more severe symptom 
> of progress up the [...] scale; that starts to impinge 
> on the real world and cause real harm to others.

Harm? In what way? You mean, if AI4U has no value?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0595654371/ "AI4U"
is a sincere attempt at publishing a textbook of real AI.

Let's not treat people (book-buyers) as if they are stupid,
Kent Paul Dolan.  They will make their own informed choices.

On the back of the AI-For-You textbook, I went out of my way
to list the positive and negative points of the AI4U book:

+ It describes the rapidly evolving AI Minds on the Web.
- It quickly becomes obsolete as the AI hyper-evolves.
+ On-demand publishing (ODP) makes for quick updates.
- The Mentifex project is considered oddball on the 'Net.
+ You've got the first book about the first real AI Mind.
- There are other, better, more authoritative AI textbooks.
+ AI4U makes a good supplement for actually coding AI.
- Artificial intelligence is too hard to understand.
+ AI4U describes the AI while it is still easy to learn.
- "I would rather build robots than study AI programming."
+ If you want to build a smart robot, then AI4U is for you.
- "I'm only a high school student/teacher; what's the use?"
+ This book will challenge even the most gifted student.
- "I am not a programmer and so I can't code AI."
+ AI4U teaches you how to operate an AI, not just code it.
- "I just want to do Web design, not artificial intelligence."
+ AI4U provides an AI that you may install on your website.
- "I am more interested in neuroscience and/or psychology."
+ AI4U teaches a theory of how the brain works psychologically.

Listing the negative points seems to cut into the sales of
AI4U, but I target only serious AI enthusiasts and teachers.

The AI4U textbook is so relatively inexpensive -- compared
with outrageously high prices for the traditional AI books --
that AI4U would make an ideal stand-alone AI textbook in
the classrooms and universities of third-world countries.
Here is why.

Using AI4U as a textbook in countries outside the USA
will leapfrog the backward, "AI Winter" defeatism inherent
in the traditional pre-Singularity texts that avoid GOFAI --
gold old-fashioned artificial intelligence (the real thing).

Name one traditional AI textbook, please, that treats of any
http://mentifex.virtualentity.com/theory5.html Theory of Mind.

Which of the high-priced, shabbily manufactured AI textbooks has
http://mentifex.virtualentity.com/jsaimind.html AI Mind source?

Why don't the vaunted "used in 700+ institutions" textbooks have
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/standard.html some AI coding standards?

Even American universities should throw out the old AI textbooks
and start afresh with a bold attempt to redefine the field of AI
and to advance the state of the art by coding such real AI Minds as
http://mentifex.virtualentity.com/cpp.html -- in the C++ AI Weblog.

Students!  Undergrads!  Post-docs!  In your AI course that you
take in this autumn of peri-Singularity 2003, non-negotiably
demand that your "prof" allow the substitution of true-blue AI4U
to replace the old AI texts that are over-priced, over-hyped and
over here.  Insist on learning something about *real* AI Minds.
You have nothing to lose but your drain$.

Arthur T. Murray
-- 
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/307824.307853 -- ACM SIGPLAN Notices;
http://www.sl4.org/archive/0205/3829.html -- comments by Dr. B.G.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0595654371/ -- AI textbook
http://www.kurzweilai.net/mindx/profile.php?id=26 - Mind-eXchange