When the terms "intelligence" or "intelligent" are used by scientists, they are referring to a large collection of human cognitive behaviors-people thinking. When life scientists speak of the intelligence of animals, they are asking us to call to mind a set of human behaviors that they are asserting the animals are (or are not) capable of. When computer scientists speak of artificial intelligence, machine intelligence, intelligent agents, or computational intelligence, we are also referring to that set of human behaviors.
When Turing proposed what we now call the "Turing Test" in 1950, he thought that a computer would pass his test for intelligence by 2000. But the set of behaviors called "intelligence" proved to be more multifaceted and complex than he or we imagined.
This talk proposes a set of grand challenges for AI that are based on modifications to the Turing Test. The challenges are aimed at scientific knowledge and reasoning (i.e. "Einstein in the box" as differing from, for example, robotics). The challenges require for successful performance: natural language reading and understanding abilities, and machine learning for knowledge acquisition. But the challenges proposed do not involve the full spectrum of common sense reasoning abilities that the original Turing Test requires. And it may be possible to meet these challenges successfully in a mid-range future of 20-30 years, or even less if we focus and get busy.
Edward Feigenbaum is Kumagai Professor of Computer Science Emeritus at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1960, doing pioneering Artificial Intelligence research. In the 1960s, he (with Buchanan, Lederberg, and others) started and developed the Expert Systems field, and the techniques of knowledge-based systems and knowledge engineering.
In the late 1960s, he was Director of the Stanford Computation Center.
In the 1970s, he served as Chairman of the Stanford University Computer Science Department.
In the 1980s, he co-founded the venture companies IntelliGenetics, IntelliCorp. Teknowledge, and Design Power, that commercialized expert systems technology. He was a member of the Board of Directors of Sperry Corporation. He served on many boards of venture companies, and has been a private venture investor. He also advised the Kansai Silicon Valley Forum in Japan. He has served on the Board of Trustees of the USA National Library of Medicine. He recently completed a term on the Board of Directors of the Charles Babbage Foundation for the History of Information Processing. He is President of the Feigenbaum Nii Foundation.
In the 1990s, he served the US government as Chief Scientist of the Air Force..
His books include Computers and Thought, Handbook of Artificial Intelligence (four volumes), The Fifth Generation, The Rise of the Expert Company. and The Japanese Entrepreneur.
He was elected to the USA National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected the second President of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. In 1995, he won the highest research honor of Computer Science, the Turing Award of the Association for Computing Machinery.
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