I thought AI was declared dead in the 80s of the previous century

Declared dead by who? What were they referring to by AI?

As for the P = NP problem, I found the following description:

A major unsolved problem in computer science is the so-called P=NP problem: machines are considered in which there is a certain amount of freedom in choosing the next step in a computation (such machines are called non-deterministic). By making good guesses (or choices) one can often obtain a quicker computation than by systematically working through all possible cases in a deterministic way. The P == NP problem asks whether every function computable on a non-deterministic machine in polynomial (i.e., tractable) time is computable in polynomial time on ordinary (deterministic) machines.
-- N. J. Cutland, Computability. Cambridge University Press, 1980. p. 238.

Everything that can be invented has been invented. - Charles H. Duell, US Commissioner of Patents, in 1899.

Update: I've found several papers on the subject including Is the NP problem solved?. Haven't had a chance to read through them yet, but they look interesting.

Update 2: A short introduction to quantum computation

Declared dead by who?

The academic world? The Computing Science community? In the 80s and the 90s, AI was defocussed on. It of course never disappeared, but it certainly wasn't as prominent as in the late 70s and early 80s.

What were they referring to by AI?

Eh, "Artificial Intelligence"? ;-) Making complex decisions as fast and in a similar way as humans can?

I just read through the paper you referred to, and it looks a bit bullshit to me. P and NP problems are defined for Turing machines, quantum machines are a fundamentally different class of machines. There are other machines possible where it hardly makes sense to talk about P and NP (take for instance an oracle and each time your algorithm has to guess, you ask the oracle instead).

I do however have serious doubts about the feasability of quantum computers. Perhaps when the NSA starts decrypting 4096 bit GPG messages almost instantly I'll become a believer.

Abigail

Generally I agree with this and your other post. AI has all the hallmarks of a degenerate research programme. But I did want to raise one point... ;-)

Eh, "Artificial Intelligence"? ;-) Making complex decisions as fast and in a similar way as humans can?

This combines what I would consider the two primary objectives of AI in a way that makes them sound like one.

1. AI as an investigative tool for a plausable model of cognition. Much work was invested into AI as a method to explain how we think we think. This research tended to be very domain specific and scaled poorly. It also had fundamental philosophical problems that put to lie many of the grandisoe claims that were made by it.
2. AI as an approach to solve problems that computers are typically bad at and humans are typically good at. This was a slighly more fruitful avenue. Usually the models bore little if any relationship to how we think we think. Examples of this are the AL work done in emergent phenomenon, GA's, neural networks.
The former appears to be almost totally abandonded. (Although high quality chess programs are perhaps one of its successes.) The latter is being used in a small number of unlikely areas with considerable success. (Chip design is a notable example)

Yves / DeMerphq
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Writing a good benchmark isnt as easy as it might look.

Everything that can be invented has been invented

The Charles Duell Rumour:

While that statement makes good fun of predictions that do not come to pass, it is none the less just a myth.

Hmm, well that's okay, I've got more where that came from:

• Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. - Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895
• I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
• There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home. - Ken Olsen, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
• The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. - Western Union internal memo, 1876
• Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value. - Marshal Ferdinand Foch, French commander of Allied forces during the closing months of World War I, 1918
• The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular? - David Sarnoff's associates, in response to his urgings for investment in radio in the 1920's
• Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. - New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work, 1921
• Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? - Harry M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

Strike them down and others will take their place! ;-)

I don't think so. Perhaps we've got a problem of vocaublary here. AI is dead. ML (Machine Learning) is making a comeback, from my point of view at least. There is great work being done on the classification problem. I can't tell you much about how that work is being done (both because I may or may not be under NDA (my internal legal magic 8 ball says situation cloudy) and because I don't know). But I can tell you that it's damm impressive at doing things like classifying web pages, and picking out name/title pairs.

As far as I'm concerned, AI=ML. Researchers who worked there (including, I'm told, and belive, some of the best AI researchers in the world) agreed, and said that the primary reason for the name change is that AI scares people.

Very well-put, but I'd say that there is a slight difference between AI and ML, if just in scope: AI says "we want to make a program that thinks, and we can do it relatively soon", and ML says "there's this particular statistical classicification problem that we're trying to solve". ML may eventually lead to AI, but there's plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the few who advocate good ol'fashioned strong AI. (I'm aiming that towards Cyc/OpenCyc, Mindpixel, and Moravec, although I've lost track of what he's doing these days. The Cog project seems less grandiose and cocky to judge from their statements.) But beyond all of that, different branches of ML, and also human cognitive modelling, are active, and chipping away at their own domain-specific problems.

-- Frag.
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"It's beat time, it's hop time, it's monk time!"