Alumni responded to PAW’s Nov. 16 cover story that described Princeton’s Program in Robotics and Intelligent Systems, led by Professor Robert Stengel *65 *68, and profiled three students and the robots they had developed.
“The work is wonderful; and all these people are much smarter than I am,” wrote Bruce Deitrick Price ’63 in a comment posted at PAW Online. “But I have to tell you this: The problem with all articles about robots (besides loose semantics) is that they paint an unrealistic picture of the AI challenge. Everything is moving much slower than once predicted because we are so much more complex than the experts assumed.” Price noted that more of his views on the subject can be found by Googling “17: Understanding Robots.”
James R. Schueler ’66 offered a different perspective: “Considering the present economic situation, what we need now is a robot that will buy a house and a car.”