Man-Made Minds: The Promise of Artificial Intelligence

Surveys current research in artificial intelligence, describes the difficulties of enabling computers to learn, understand, and reason, and examines ethical issues related to AI

Physicist and science writer Waldrop has written an extensive review of the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence. His chronological organization stands in contrast to the personal journalism of Grant Fjermedal's Tomorrow Makers ( LJ 2/1/87). Waldrop describes the work of early theorists such as Von Neumann, Newall, and Simon. He thoroughly explains the contributions of David Marr's vision theory. He includes an up-to-date section on commercially available expert systems, along with discussions of military uses of AI, robots, and other topics of interest. The only area regrettably not covered is speech recognition. Recommended for general and academic collections. Mary Greene Havener, MIT Lincoln Lab. Lib., Lexington, Mass.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.