[cctalk] Re: Inline Serial Device?

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