Entry

What is alternative artificial intelligence?

Oct 24th, 2001 12:03
A.T. Murray, http://sourceforge.net/projects/mind

Alternative AI (as opposed to mainstream AI in a folder on the same 
level in this hierarchy) is the less often seen but much more dynamic 
constellation of Internet and World Wide Web sites where the non-
Establishment AI programmers, robotics hobbyists and philosophers of 
mind collaborate loosely in the human rush towards the 
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html 
Technological Singularity of Vernor Vinge.  There are no entry barriers 
to the field of alternative AI: no credentials, no funding and no 
promise of a job.  People in alternative AI do it "because it is 
there."  A perusal of the alternative AI resources will show not the 
solid and stodgy high profiles of slow-moving mainstream AI but rather 
the quick-moving AI initiatives that range from outrageous and obvious 
idiocy to serious but still possibly misguided AI implementations with 
completely free and available open-source public-domain source code.  
Alternative AI is currently (A.D. 2001) so wild and wooly that you may 
see extremes of controversy erupting in the questions and answers here, 
but hold onto your hats, be polite, and fire away.