What Is The Well-Dressed AI Educator Wearing Now?

Abstract

A funny thing happened to me at IJCAI-81. I went to a panel on "Education in AI" and stepped back into an argument that I had thought settled several years ago. The debate was between the "scruffies," led by Roger Schank and Ed Feignbaum, and the "neats," led by Nils Nilsson. The neats argued that no education in AI was complete without a strong theoretical component, containing, for instance, courses on predicate logic and automata theory. The scruffies maintained that such a theoretical component was not only unnecessary, but harmful.