Obstacles to human level - AI development (from Mc Carthy)

"The computer science world is still suffering from a 1990s fit of pseudo-practicality that is inimical to the solution of difficult scientific problems. Lip service is given to basic research, and a lot of basic research is done, but the initiation of ambitious research by young people is hampered by the now prevalent doctrine that “basic research” should be done in connection with applied problems that have been identified by the competent committees. I think that Newell and Minsky and I would have had a much harder time initiating AI research if the atmosphere of the 1950s had been like that of the 1990s. Computer science suffers more than older fields from this disease, one of the main carriers of which was the Com- puter Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council. Its worst sin was merging computer science with computer engineering in its harmful, narrow-minded report Computing the Future [30].Nevertheless, the main problem in reaching human level AI is not the politics of science and technology but the intrinsic difficulty of the scientific problems". [30] C. Science, N.R.C. Telecommunications Board, Computing the Future: A Broader Agenda for Computer Science and Engineering, National Academies Press, 1992. From: Mc Carthy, John, From here to human-level AI, Artificial Intelligence, 171 (2007) 1174–1182