Notes on AI

Events of two centuries, 28 March 2003. This is an expanded version of a piece that appeared in the San Jose Mercury-News on 1999 June 24. I thank Cher Wollard for inviting it.

Appearance and Reality: A challenge to machine learning contains a puzzle whose solution is to determine the reality behind the appearance you see on the page. The challenge is to make machine learning programs and scientific discovery programs that can find the reality behind appearance in this simple case.

My 1964 Stanford AI Memo A Tough Nut for Proof Procedures has aroused increased interest lately. The present version has some recent comments. It is to prove that a checkerboard with two diagonally opposite squares removed cannot be covered by dominoes that cover two adjacent squares.