[extropy-chat] RE: [wta-talk] SIAI seeking seed AI programmer candidates

[Samantha Atkins]

On Jun 2, 2004, at 3:21 AM, BillK wrote:

> On Wed Jun 2 00:58:24 MDT 2004 Eugen Leitl wittily wrote:
>> With programmers alone it's hard even to tie your own shoelaces.
>> What of hardware people? Numerics people? Neuroscientists, physicists?
>>
>> Writing code is a negligible part of the project.
>
> Here in the UK over the next five years the government will spend an
> extra £5billion (~$9.2 billion) creating the IT infrastructure for a
> 21st century national health service. The National Programme is the 
> UK's
> biggest technology project. Some articles mention up to 10,000
> programmers will be involved.
>

So it is expected to be an utter fiasco, I see.  Good software is not 
written by huge programming teams.  This almost universally turns out 
to be the case.

> Take the buzzwords out and basically all this money is being spent to
> get our medical records on a database so that they can be on a screen 
> in
> hospital and at your local doctor.

The job could be done with no more than 1% of the staff and only that 
many to handle various specialized image acquisition, analysis and 
display subsystems, HCI,  and do in depth testing and proof of 
correctness.  I would not expect the core platform to require more than 
20 tops.   And the complete program should take no more than two years.

>
> Now if it takes that much effort to get data on a screen, how much 
> should taking over the world cost?
>

It doesn't take that much effort and SIAI is not in the business of 
taking over the world.

- samantha