A Parable (about AI in large organizations)
     
     
     Once upon a time, in a kingdom nothing like our own, gold was very
scarce, forcing jewelers to try and sell little tiny gold rings and
bracelets.  Then one day a PROSPECTOR came into the capitol sporting a
large gold nugget he found in a hill to the west.  As the word went out
that there was "gold in them thar hills", the king decided to take an
active management role.  He appointed a "gold task force" which one year
later told the king "you must spend lots of money to find gold, lest
your enemies get richer than you."

     So a "Gold Center" was formed, staffed with many spiffy looking
Ph.D. types who had recently published papers on gold (remarkably similar
to their earlier papers on silver).  Experienced prospectors had been
interviewed, but they smelled and did not have a good grasp of gold
theory.

     The Center bought a large number of state of the art bulldozers and
took them to a large field they had found that was both easy to drive on
and freeway accessible.  After a week of sore rumps, getting dirty, and
not finding anything, they decided they could best help the gold cause
by researching better tools.

     So they set up some demo sand hills in clear view of the king's
castle and stuffed them with nicely polished gold bars.  Then they split
into various research projects, such as "bigger diggers", for handling
gold boulders if they found any, and "timber-gold alloys", for making
houses from the stuff when gold eventually became plentiful.

     After a while the town barons complained loud enough and also got
some gold research money.  The lion's share was allocated to the most
politically powerful barons, who assigned it to looking for gold in
places where it would be very convenient to find it, such as in rich
jewelers' backyards.  A few bulldozers, bought from smiling bulldozer
salespeople wearing "Gold is the Future" buttons, were time shared across
the land. Searchers who, in their allotted three days per month of
bulldozer time, could just not find anything in the backyards of "gold
committed" jewelers were admonished to search harder next month.

     The smart money understood that bulldozers were the best digging
tool, even though they were expensive and hard to use.  Some backward
prospector types, however, persisted in panning for gold in secluded
streams.  Though they did have some success, gold theorists knew that
this was due to dumb luck and the incorporation of advanced bulldozer
research ideas in later pan designs.

     After many years of little success, the king decided the whole
pursuit was a waste and cut off all funding.  The Center people quickly
unearthed their papers which had said so all along.

     The end.
     
P.S. There really was gold in them thar hills.  Still is.
     
by Robin Hanson (using silverstein@sushi)