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SQL? That's an interesting case. It sits at the nexus of a well-defined relational theory, Codd et al., and normalised table data, and you can only ask it thi

SQL? That's an interesting case. It sits at the nexus of a well-defined relational theory, Codd et al., and normalised table data, and you can only ask it things which make sense like selection, projection and various joins. To the question of intentionality, it is declarative and does hide a lot of the work of arriving at the requested result. Perhaps when viewed in the context of a more tightly defined problem set and solution space, and allowing for the advances in algorithms, AI and computing power since the 1970's - DNNs, evolutionary algos, backpropagation, annealing etc. -intentional goal-seeking self-programming should at least be conceivable.

AstralStorm 7y ago
Having a grab bag of algorithms did not make an idea. I suspect the author thought more of responding to user's intentions not software doing whatever it wills. This being a multitude of hard AI unsolved problems layered one on another. Such as building a fitness function or goal based on natural language input combined with context and refinement. I know if two semi successful very limited attempts, one being Google DeepMind AutoML, the other being Bayou. They're really not too useful in practice anymore. (State of the art surpassed anything they are capable of.)