'Fifth Generation' Became Japan's Lost Generation (1992) • Hacker News Board

Re: 'Fifth Generation' Became Japan's Lost Generation (1992)

#51

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 9:56 AM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #49

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> He wasn't a fan. Given the historical circumstances, I'll be he would prefer they were trying to build a parallel Lisp machine.

If I remember correctly, we did have a lab full of TI Lisp machines at the time. Never used them myself, though. The interesting point, though, was that the specific goals were not clearly related to the fundamental reasons for doing it. And as it turned out, most of the research topics (but not all, IIRC) were really boosted by work in graphics co-processors.

My understanding was that, at the time, Lisp and Prolog were the two "languages of AI", with Lisp favoured in the US and Prolog in Europe and Japan. Knowing how language arguments go, I assume that an AI professor who didn't like the idea the Japanese were going for Prolog would be naturally preferring Lisp. I might be wrong :)

As to the 5th generation computer project, what little I've read so far has more or less convinced me that special-purpose processors will never be better than general-purpose ones, at least not for general-purpose computing (which, ultimately, was the aim of the project).

I'm saying that as a dyed-in-the-wool symbolist btw (and a long-time Prolog user). Special-purpose processors to make my Prolog go faster is something I'd love to get my hands on- but, for most people? I think it's not even number 1000 in their list of priorities ot improve computing performance.

Re: 'Fifth Generation' Became Japan's Lost Generation (1992)

#52

Post by lispm » Thu, Mar 22, 2018, 1:54 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #51

mcguire wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I remember correctly, we did have a lab full of TI Lisp machines at the time. Never used them myself, though. The interesting point, though, was that the specific goals were not clearly related to the fundamental reasons for doing it. And as it turned out, most of the research topics (but not all, IIRC) were really boosted by work in graphics co-processors.

My understanding was that, at the time, Lisp and Prolog were the two "languages of AI", with Lisp favoured in the US and Prolog in Europe and Japan. Knowing how language arguments go, I assume that an AI professor who didn't like the idea the Japanese were going for Prolog would be naturally preferring Lisp. I might be wrong :) As to the 5th generation computer project, what little I've read so far has more or less c…

Basically most AI/Lisp vendors also offered a Prolog in Lisp. As a Prolog implementation the standalone Prolog compilers were faster and had more Prolog features, but since the Lisp tools were a bit more mature, even in Japan some projects used Prolog in Lisp.

There was a lot of research for AI hardware in the 80s and also for Prolog hardware. I once saw a Japanese Prolog Machine (a special purpose workstation with a Prolog environment), but I didn't have the chance to actually use it.

With faster/cheaper Intel or RISC processors and a lack of research funding, the topic of specialized hardware was mostly ending in the early 90s.

Re: 'Fifth Generation' Became Japan's Lost Generation (1992)

#53

Post by mieseratte » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 7:08 AM UTC

dcldcl wrote: post #47

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you including the rural populations of each city? Chongqing, for example, is actually fairly rural, it’s basically what we would call a state. Chinese municipalities are complicated. Even Beijing is about half rural.

Oh yeah I'm not saying the model is great, but if someone wants to discount the 1 to 4.3 ratio, that's the estimate I'd throw out there. And if we take in the half rural estimate, that'd already put it at 1 to 1 today (with lots of room for growth). Agreed that Chongqing is fairly different (since it's forced "urbanization" due to the Three Gorges Dam). But I've heard a lot of people say Beijing and Shanghai make NYC…

> Even LA and NY have lots of parts that many Americans may not consider as living "meaningfully in the present" from the point of view being able to work on advanced projects like "Fifth Generation" computing.

I could have put it clearer, but my understanding was that China still has a non-trivial population that is not involved in the "advanced economy," in a way that would surprise most Americans. That is, subsistence farming, less-than high school education, etc.