scruffies

scruffies
 n.

   See {neats vs. scruffies}.
    

neats vs. scruffies
scruffies

   <artificial intelligence, jargon> The label used to refer to
   one of the continuing {holy wars} in {artificial intelligence}
   research.  This conflict tangles together two separate issues.
   One is the relationship between human reasoning and AI;
   "neats" tend to try to build systems that "reason" in some way
   identifiably similar to the way humans report themselves as
   doing, while "scruffies" profess not to care whether an
   {algorithm} resembles human reasoning in the least as long as
   it works.  More importantly, neats tend to believe that
   {logic} is king, while scruffies favour looser, more ad-hoc
   methods driven by empirical knowledge.  To a neat, scruffy
   methods appear promiscuous, successful only by accident and
   not productive of insights about how intelligence actually
   works; to a scruffy, neat methods appear to be hung up on
   formalism and irrelevant to the hard-to-capture "common sense"
   of living intelligences.

   (1994-11-29)