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Some breakaway AI scientists suspect that the answer to this problem lies in the way humans respond to the context of an activity or conversation. Brian Smith, a Xerox theorist studying the foundations of knowledge, believes that people derive a tremendous amount of information from the physical setting of a conversation, and that meaning that is not evident usually emerges during the dialogue. If he can reduce this process to theory, Smith believes, it will be possible to build a machine that would know what is meant in ordinary human conversation. Getting a machine to act on what it "understands" is yet another problem. Stan Rosenschein, former head of artificial-intelligence research at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif., is testing a robot called Flakey, which he hopes will have the ability to carry out a physical chore like delivering a package. Right now Flakey can follow only simple, specific instructions, then exclaim, "I did it! I did it!"
How long will it take before machines are developed that are truly intelligent and able to make their way in the world? It is, of course, foolish to predict where any new technology is going or when it will get there. But in his 1986 book on artificial intelligence, Machinery of the Mind, Science Writer George Johnson offers a guidepost. He recounts the story of a Chinese student who became disillusioned with the study of artificial intelligence. It was as if, said the student, a modern American had asked an ancient Greek to build a television, then offered only the information that TV is a system that projects images across long distances; logically, the ancient might proceed to place a long sequence of reflecting mirrors across the landscape and claim to have built such a machine.
That, the student concluded, was an apt analogy to AI. Like their Greek counterparts, AI scientists can build crude models and they have a rough idea of the principles and properties involved in achieving their goal. But it may be centuries, if ever, before all those elements are sufficiently understood to enable mere mortals to fulfill the dream of AI: to create electronic replicas of themselves.