IMHO, AI is bull
Martin
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Koning via cctalk [mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org]
Sent: 13 November 2022 15:10
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Cc: Paul Koning <paulkoning(a)comcast.net>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: Inline Serial Device?
On Nov 12, 2022, at 1:08 PM, Anders Nelson via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I bet NN/AI would be helpful with data recovery - if we can model
certain common failure modes with those old drive heads we could infer
what the data should have been...
NN maybe, I need to understand those better. I see they are now a building block for
OCR.
AI, not so clear. In my view, AI is a catch-all term for "software whose properties
are unknown and probably unknowable". A computer, including one that executes AI
softwware, is a math processing engine, so in principle its behavior is fully defined by
its design and by the software in it. But when you do AI in which "learning" is
part of the scheme, the resulting behavior is in fact unknown and undefined.
For some applications that may be ok. OCR doesn't suffer materially from occasional
random errors, since it has errors anyway from the nature of its input. But, for example,
I shudder at the notion of AI in safety-critical applications (like autopilots for
aircraft, or worse yet for cars). A safety critical application implemented in a manner
that precludes the existence of a specification is a fundanmentally insane notion.
paul