Wikipedia:Peer review/History of artificial intelligence/archive1

History of artificial intelligence

This is a complete rewrite. I encourage anyone interested in the history of technology to review -- it's intended for the general reader. Help me move the article along towards featured status. Thanks for your help. ---- CharlesGillingham 06:06, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, APR _t 01:05, 15 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, a few comments:

· Your lead section seems a little excessively "poetic;" it doesn't really sound encyclopedic in tone. The word "impolitely" sticks out as seeming out of place

Cut the word "impolitely". I think it might be more "dramatic" than "poetic". I'll try to tone it down if I can.

(To tell you the truth, I honestly think the subject is dramatic and that the researchers themselves felt it was dramatic.) ---- CharlesGillingham 19:00, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done The lead now contains more factual information and less generalities, so hopefully seems less "poetic". ---- CharlesGillingham 16:35, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

· "If the history of AI is any guide, it will take far longer than optimists have predicted but, nevertheless, AI will continue to move steadily closer to its elusive goal" is a conclusion you've drawn - Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. It's a reasonable one, but still inappropriate.

Done Cut

· The "Formal reasoning and logic" strikes me as having a little too much background that is only tangentially related to AI

Done Cut down

· The statement "The most electrifying aspect of the paper was that it clearly showed that intelligent machines were at least plausible" could use some elaboration - I'm not sure whether this is supposed to follow from the first part of the paragraph or whether this was some other issue brought up in Turing's paper.

Done Added a sentence that provides evidence for this point.

· "From the first day that computers became available, people began to teach them intelligent behavior" strikes me as hyperbole (if literally true, it needs a source), which isn't really appropriate in an encyclopedia.

Done Cut

· Calling Simon's statement "hubristic" (in the section "Newell and Simon's Logic Theorist") seems like POV. The word is similarly used again in "Reasoning as search."

Done cut (both uses)

· "Daniel Bobrow's extraordinary program STUDENT" is inappropriately POV

Done Cut

· "Their tremendous optimism had raised expectations impossibly high, and when the results they had promised failed to materialize, funding for AI disappeared" needs a source

Done Moved source closer to sentence.

· "The agencies that supported AI research became frustrated with the lack of progress and eventually cut off all funding." Surely this is an exaggeration? All funding from all agencies? If true, a source is definitely needed.

Done Rephrased as "The agencies that funded AI research (the British government, DARPA and NRC) became frustrated with the lack of progress and eventually cut off almost all funding for undirected research into AI." which is true, and is shown in the sources for the rest of the paragraph. It's also true these were the only substantial sources of funding for AI in the 1960s, but this is harder to source. A few AI laboratories survived, but most were dismantled or folded into other departments, especially in England. DARPA continued to fund projects that were tangentially related to AI, but wouldn't directly grant money to AI research. (Thus the word "undirected") The new version understates what actually happened, but it has the advantage of being more believable and firmly sourced. ---- CharlesGillingham 19:00, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

· "One of the only people to have lunch with Dreyfus" seems a very odd way to state it. Surely his wife, friends, and plenty of non-AI-related people "had lunch with him?"

Rephrased as "The only member of the AI community who would be seen eating lunch with Dreyfus was Joseph Weizenbaum, the author of ELIZA" and referenced with this quote from Weizenbaum: "I became the only member of the community that would be seen eating with Hubert Dreyfus. And I deliberately made it plain that theirs was not the way to treat a human being." I suppose this may still be a little odd. I'll look at it again. ---- CharlesGillingham 19:00, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done Paragraph has a more documentary opening. ---- CharlesGillingham 04:54, 10 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

· "It was an enormous success: it was estimated to have saved the company 40 million dollars over just six years of operation" needs a source

Done Moved source closer to statement.

· A section is titled "Where is HAL 9000?" but it is never stated what this is except in a photo caption, which itself doesn't give enough context to make the question understandable.

Done Added a paragraph. Still may need a tweak. ---- CharlesGillingham 19:00, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, this is an excellent article. I found only one grammar error, which I went ahead and corrected, and none of the errors I listed above should take much effort to fix. As someone with very little knowledge on the subject, I had no trouble understand it. With these addressed, I would certainly endorse the article for good article status. -Elmer Clark 06:22, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]