Share

Buy Used

$5.98

+ $0.00 shipping

Used: Very Good | Details

Sold by Discover-Books

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

See All Buying Options

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See this image

The Fifth Generation Fallacy: Why Japan is Betting Its Future on Artificial Intelligence Hardcover – October 8, 1987

by J. Marshall Unger (Author)

Be the first to review this item

See all formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

Hardcover
from $2.00 16 Used from $2.00 3 New from $91.53

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 and business, perpetuated recently by popular books like Japan as Number One, Unger shows that Japanese researchers are less concerned with economic coups than with solving a fundamental problem concerning their notoriously difficult written language and the challenges it poses for computer technology. The complex mixture of Chinese and phonetic characters that make up the script can only laboriously be typewritten and so are resistant to one of the most basic of computer functions -- entering data into the machine's memory banks.
Outlining the bewildering complexity of the Japanese script, which tested the limits of human intelligence even in bygone eras, Unger describes how in the modern age it has been the cause of disturbingly low levels of white-collar productivity and a surprisingly high degree of incomplete literacy in Japan. He goes on to demonstrate convincingly not only the ultimate incompatability of the script with existing computer technology but also the futility of the hope that AI, the goal of the hugely expensive Fifth Generation Project, will rescue the Japanese from this problem. He also explores the emotionally laden cultural mythology underlying Japanese resistance to script reform, which he points out is the obvious engineering solution to the drive to integrate computers into Japanese society. He concludes that the Japanese push towards AI and their refusal to acknowledge these fundamental facts about their writing system are intimately related and largely explain why Japan has been the first nation to spend vast amounts of money on AI research.

The Fifth Generation Fallacy: Why Japan is Betting Its Future on Artificial Intelligence

Available from these sellers.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An immensely stimulating and enjoyable book."--Far Eastern Economic Review

"His style is powerful, his evidence is balanced, his scholarship is detailed, and his conclusions and recommendations are uncompromising. A challenging book, likely to be controversial."--Choice

About the Author

About the author:
J. Marshall Unger is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu. He has published extensively on Japanese culture, linguistics and computer-based education.

Product details

Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; First Edition edition (October 8, 1987)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 019504939X
ISBN-13: 978-0195049398
Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 0.9 x 8.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
Average Customer Review: Be the first to review this item
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,842,694 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3402 in Books > Computers & Technology > Computer Science > AI & Machine Learning > Intelligence & Semantics
- #71912 in Books > Science & Math > Mathematics
- #370900 in Books > Business & Money

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Customer reviews

There are no customer reviews yet.

5 star		0%
4 star		0%
3 star		0%
2 star		0%
1 star		0%

Write a customer review

Pages with related products. See and discover other items: industrial scale, industrial scales, large shipping box, commercial weight scale, heavy duty shipping boxes, heavy weight scale

English United States

Conditions of Use
Privacy Notice
Interest-Based Ads
© 1996-2017, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates