I recently saw this Reuters article on Yahoo News. In typical science reporting fashion, the headline seems to be pure hyperbole - does anyone here know enough to clarify what the groups referenced have actually achieved?
This links represent what I could find:
Homepage of the "Robot Scientist" project:http://www.aber.ac.uk/compsci/Research/bio/robotsci/
Homepage of Hod Lipson: http://www.mae.cornell.edu/lipson/
Hod Lipson's 2007 paper "Automated reverse engineering of nonlinear dynamical systems" (pdf)
It should be noted that the "AI winter" is somewhat apocryphal, and a lot of the much-maligned techniques of GOFAI (or things similar to them) are being used to great effect in small chunks that work together.
Yes, but how often do you hear those GOFAI techniques described as AI except in AI textbooks?
Speaking of which, I have a copy of Russell and Norvig's AIMA on my desk right now, and in fact I should probably be spending more time doing exercises from it and less time posting on LW...