Dan Fabulich wrote:
> Lyle strongly disagrees, arguing instead that "Automated systems always
exist
> in a larger context which is not automated." Certainly all PRESENT
automated
> systems operate this way, but no one is arguing that AI exists now, but
only
> that it CAN exist in the future.
It is interesting to note that some particularly aggressive companies are moving to change this situation today, without advanced AI. The idea is that instead of having isolated islands of automation connected by manual processes, you should have an ocean of automated data manipulation with occasional islands of human labor. As your pools of automation become connected you tend to realize dramatic cost savings and process improvements, which provide the incentive to keep the improvement process going.
The Internet offers the potential to extend this way of doing business to a global scale, and we all know how much effort is going into making that happen. I expect that the general level of automation will continue to increase until it reaches the limits of what can be done with then-current AI, at which point each new improvement in automation technology will spread as quickly as an important software upgrade does today.
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@transcient.com