A Bright Future For Soft Computing

Interesting this article here: Rebirthing HAL.

I think I have been hearing the very same arguments since my first days -- and even earlier -- as a freshman at my former university.

Evolutionary algorithms, neural networks, and others bio-inspired approaches are just profound simplifications of real systems. Don't expect them, at least in the near future, to replicate what their real counterparts do.

Evolving Selling Rates Through Simulated Evolution

There's an interesting article in E-Commerce Times on the use of innovations to improve sales. The author states that artificial intelligence techniques -- such as genetic algorithms, expert systems, and fuzzy systems -- could help in such an endevour. An excerpt:

"Every customer touch point will capture more information that the system can then analyze to increase the chances of making decisions on how to sell more to customers. The software cloud will be using concepts like expert systems, genetic algorithms, and fuzzy logic to make recommendations on how the business will sell more, what to sell where, who to sell to -- and it will modify itself to be able to accomplish these optimizations."

I think big vendors, such as Amazon.com, are already using those AI stuffs.