The fifth generation fallacy
by J. Marshall Unger · first published 1987
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For several years a great deal of attention has been focused on Japan's highly publicized Fifth Generation Project, a research program aimed at the development of "intelligent" computers that can think like human beings. It has been claimed that such machines are the technology of the future, and that whoever gets them first will emerge as the new leader of the world economy. In this fascinating new book, J. Marshall Unger reveals that the West has completely misunderstood Japan's interest in Artificial Intelligence. Contrary to the common view of Japan's unassailable superiority in technology
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…generation project, and this article is a wonderful reminder of how crazy it was, though it doesn't quite capture the insane hype around the whole thing. There's an excellent, if imperfect, book called "The Fifth Generation Fallacy" by JM Unger (who, in a weird circumstance that makes me think the writers of our narrative are just plain lazy, a few years later, became the head of the Japanese department I was in) that talks about…
on “The Fifth Generation Computing Project” ↗+1, and I’m eagerly awaiting Mullaney’s follow-on (in progress) about post-typewriter text entry. An odd but interesting related book is Unger’s _Fifth Generation Fallacy_. If you ignore the dubious framing about 1980s Japanese AI, there’s a long discussion of kanji text entry (including computer text entry) with some kanji-specific references that _Chinese Typewriter_…
on “A Look at Early Japanese Typewriters (2016)” ↗…surprises along the way. I would say it is like the "Mythical Man Month" from the Japanese side of computing. The book also opened my eyes to the difficulty of mastering Japanese. https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Generation-Fallacy-Artificial- Intelligence/dp/019504939X
on “A mistake that killed Japan's software industry? (2023)” ↗…computerization and it would be madness for other countries to throw money at AI in the 80's just because the Japanese were. I'm trying to find a reference now if anyone can help. Edit: https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Generation-Fallacy-Artificial-I...
on “'Fifth Generation' Became Japan's Lost Generation (1992)” ↗Linguist James Marshall Unger in his book, The Fifth Generation Fallacy, argued that the primary motivation for FGCS reasearch was to develop NLP for the Japanese writing system. He claimed that the project was doomed to failure because the high level of ambiguity in the…
on “'Fifth Generation' Became Japan's Lost Generation (1992)” ↗An old book "The Fifth Generation Fallacy" (Unger) addresses this somewhat. As I recall it speaks about the desire by the Japanese leadership of the time to build AI translation and related it to the challenge of full literacy in Japanese due…
on “Great Vowel Shift” ↗NEW LINK https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Generation-Fallacy-Artificial-I...
on “A mistake that killed Japan's software industry? (2023)” ↗Here you go: https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Generation-Fallacy-Artificial-I...
on “A mistake that killed Japan's software industry? (2023)” ↗