'Many' ways to create artificial intelligence. Just ask the UK's AI businesses

Nothing brings a smile to the face of Sabine Toulson – co-founder in 1995 of Intelligent Financial Systems – faster than the notion that AI and its associated technologies are “something new”. Both Sabine and husband Darren were graduates of UCL’s Artificial Intelligence Lab – alongside other veteran entrepreneurs such as …

[steelpillow]

Top end

Great summary. Will be interesting to see how the current crop get labelled in hindsight. Back in the day they said, "Oh, computers aren't AI, they are just programming, they'd need to beat humans at chess or something like that." So they did. "Oh, that's not AI, it's just clever programming. A robot that can trundle round a strange room and plug itself in to recharge would be needed." So they did. "Oh, that's not AI, the skill is pre-programmed. you'd need big data and unpredictable machine learning." So they did. Will the future say, "Oh, that's not AI...."?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Will the future say, "Oh, that's not AI...."?

You mean when the robots are coming to kill us all...

"Oh, that's not AI, the skill is pre-programmed..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Will the future say, "Oh, that's not AI...."?

"Sorry for bringing on the Apocalypse with my new init file..."

"That's quite all right. I guess the AIs just wanted it more."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Will the future say, "Oh, that's not AI...."?

It's not AI until you program it not to kill you, but it does anyway and can explain why.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Will the future say, "Oh, that's not AI...."?

Sounds like the AI in seasn 3 of "The 100" - setup to help solve the worlds problems the AI identified the problem as being "too many humans" and the solution as launching the nuclear missiles it had access to.

[Whitter]

AI or expert system?

The engine degradation and flash-point examples sound like expert systems, probably based on regressions of previous data, rather than any real demonstration of "AI" as such. Is this just tech buzzword bingo or is there more than first meets the eye?

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: AI or expert system?

Expert system(s). Very good ones, very advanced ones.

To use and expand the engine-monitoring example: an intelligent system would at one point come up with suggestions of its own like "I don't really need all that input from the sensor monitoring parameter X3; this data hardly ever has any influence on my calculations. Let's try adding another sensor that can monitor parameter/component $$$ instead and see how that goes."

[steelpillow]

Re: AI or expert system?

An expert system has only one function, say diagnosing medical symptoms. General intelligence can pick up new functions whenever it wants, like we can. Whether we describe some artificial systems as "intelligent", even though they do not have general intelligence, is a matter of wordplay between the sales team and the philosophy graduates.*

* Darn, most of the sales team ARE philosophy grads. I give up.

[John Smith 19]

Shock news. UK company has valuable IP and does not immediately sell itself to the US.

What is it about UK companies that make their highest goal to be bought out ASAP by anyone offering anything close to their real value?

UK Pharma companies are famous for it. Would ARM have stood its ground so long if most of its backers were not already American?