Ask HN: So what's new in the world of A.I.?

Research of any sort rarely makes news. The exceptions involve universities with very zealous, hard-working P.R. people (who pretty much always overstate the importance and impact of the work they cover).

As for startups, they, and other businesses, are there to make money. And there just isn't much money to be made in A.I. (yet?). The only commercially viable idea to come out of A.I., that I know of, is the expert system. And that turned out to be a pretty small market. [EDIT: Seems I was way off here. See replies, and my apologies to all the hard-working A.I. researchers out there.]

> Is it really such a dead field?

Well, not dead, but it certainly is not what it once was. 50 years ago, many knowledgeable people thought that machines with human-level capabilities were just around the corner. Today it's just Ray Kurzweil. 50 years of rather dismal results tends to dampen the enthusiasm of prospective researchers.

> There's never any breakthroughs announced, ....

"Breakthrough" is a word used by P.R. people. Real researchers know that knowledge is almost always advanced in small steps, building on previous work. When you read about a "breakthrough"--in any field--be skeptical.

> ... and there's no grandiose research projects underway that I know of.

Almost certainly not. This is because the U.S. Congress, and similar organizations elsewhere, have not made A.I. a funding priority. No grant $$$ means no big research projects at universities. (And no obvious commercial possibilities means no big research projects at corporations.)

But there are certainly plenty of little projects.

> Are there any websites that try to track the different AI projects going on?

That would be difficult, since, when a researcher starts a project, he generally does not announce the fact to the world. Research projects often have no official status. It's just a few people--or one person--playing around with some ideas. If they come up with something interesting, then they publish a paper about it, but that is only after the fact. So it would be hard to gather the information for such a website.

Generally, the way to track current research in a field is to look at the relevant journals. Unfortunately, this can be tricky without expertise in the field. In any case, here are a few links to A.I. journals, to get you started:

Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research http://www.jair.org/

Journal of Machine Learning Research http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/

Journal of Intelligent Systems http://www.jisjournal.org/

Another possibility is to find an online discussion group about A.I. research. However, I can't help you there.

Oh come on, you're baiting AI people (like me) here. :P

* Spam Filters (Bayesian networks)

* Video Game AI (game trees, fuzzy logic, etc)

* Natural Language Processing (Markov networks)

* Computational Finance (pattern recognition)

The list goes on, but the thing about AI is this: if an algorithm is successful, it quickly becomes a part of the industry or its own field and is forgotten.

They are tackling the problem of how to make AI "friendly" -- http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intellige...

That vision has basically made the term Artificial Intelligence become yet another meaningless marketing term.

The concept of A.I. is like the concept of organic chemistry. There are vast sub-disciplines that are loosely collected under the term "organic chemistry" because they more or less all involve carbon atoms at some point. A.I is like this as well, because there are many, many sub-disciplines and they all involve the concept of systems that are capable of "learning".

So, my first recommendation is to just forget any preconceptions of "Artificial Intelligence" because its not something that really exists, just like Brawndo the Thirst Mutilator does not have what cows crave.

What does exist is this vast field of scientific, practical, and commercial activity involving learning systems. These systems are typically closely tied to computation, aka hardware or software, but not all. Some work is done in biology and some in organic chemistry (interesting cross connection there).

Another preconception to forget is that "A.I" died in the 80's and is irrelevant today. What nearly all people who are even loosely familiar with the term, beyond killer robots from the Future or lonely little robot boys with mommy issues, is that A.I. has no part in their lives. The truth is that it has been all around us for many years.

The timely delivery of your new shoes from Zappos or buying oranges in the winter: shipping. Tens of thousands of planes in the air at any moment: transportation. The computer chips that are in your computer or handheld that you are reading this on: computing (simulated annealing, fascinating!). Millisecond stock trades: the economy. Automated stellar classification: astronomy. The list goes on.

So once you put aside your preconceptions for a bit, start asking what kinds of fields you're really interested and then looking at how learning systems are influencing them. Sometimes you will be surprised to learn that what might be classically called "A.I" has utterly invaded your favorite field and that the people who work in it are entirely unaware that the learning systems they're using might even be considered "A.I".

Apparently.

I think I know a fair amount about research in general, but not, it appears, much about the current state of A.I. research.