Real science

Hayes discussed some of the essential points characterizing the training that philosophers and mathematicians receive as part of their education. Philosophers, said Hayes, are trained to argue not about conclusions, but about arguments. Mathematicians are trained to find shorter proofs. While the talk was mainly tongue and cheek, as such things go what made it humorous was precisely how true it was. This set me to thinking about something that Hayes' talk seem to leave wide open: what can we joke about the training of computer scientists, and those in AI in particular? I spend far too much time thinking about jokes, I suspect, but this thinking lead me quickly to an obstacle. A person who studies philosophy is called a " philosopher, " a person who studies mathematics is called a " mathematician , " a person who studies computer science is called a " computer scientist. " What do we call a person who studies artificial intelli-gence? Using the grammatical rules that appear to govern the three examples here, we get " artificial intelligencer " , " artificial intelli-gencian, " or " artificial intelligentist. " At AAAI-2000 in Orlando, I recall seeing promotional material for the conference that read, " Hey AI scientist! " I don't think AI can proceed until we finally decide what to call ourselves. " AI scientist " evokes images of manqué scientists like " political scientist, " or " social scientist. " This, of course, is a problem with the name of our parent field as well, and not an easy one to solve. Rather than attempt to solve it here for the benefit of the four people who read this column , I will simply leave it open as an important path for future research in our field, and probably a major government funding program. Returning then to the initial problem, how would we characterize the basic nature of an artificial intelligencian's education? As com-puterists, we inherit to begin with a slight inferiority complex with respect to the other sciences, since we are often considered to be less than a " true " science —there is, after all, no Nobel Prize in computer science. As a result, one common element to our training is denying that we did any programming. Some take this training as an offensive weapon as well, and accuse others of having done no more than write a program. …