Is asking about AI algorithms or frameworks recommendation on-topic?

Question

Few examples:

• https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/209/8
• What genetic algorithm designs are there that includes models of epigenetics?
• https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/181/8
• What are good APIs out there for (untrained) intent detection?

Answer 1

I would suggest that "programming" and "implementation problems" be explicitly listed as outside the scope of this site. If you see them, I would thoughtfully direct the authors to bring these questions to sites which were explicitly created to handle these "technical" issues.

But why can't we have these questions here, too?

Many sites have some overlap in their subject spaces, but we do not want to optimize for sites that explicitly do so. In the formative stages of this proposal, many opponents argued that the development of AI is clearly already covered among sites like Stack Overflow, Statistics, Data Science, and similar applied sites.

But… the claim that we've identified a collection of academic, sociological, and conceptual questions that fall between the cracks of these site is what gave this proposal a chance to launch. See Apparently this is a duplicate.

We still have to see how that claim stands up in actual practice.

I wrote a bit more about this during the proposal process — Will machine learning be considered as on-topic? — and the folks looking on seemed widely accepting of that premise as justification for trying out this site.

Will [machine learning] be considered as on-topic?

No, machine learning as far as implementation goes is not on topic for this site. We've had two previous failures in launching a site about AI (which already included machine learning) — and the resolution following those failures was to create a more-comprehensive site which included the development of AI, machine learning, statistical tools, big data, NLP, data mining, etc, etc.

That site is Data Science [among others].

Data Science is an applied site for all the programmers/statisticians/mathematicians who are trying to make this stuff work.

So why are we trying an AI site… again?

Notice that this proposal is in the 'Science' category; not 'Technology'. Despite the creation of a Data Science site to cover this topic, the community made a sufficiently compelling case that there is a swath of questions in the academic humanities arena that are not covered by our current sites.

It was convincing enough to give this site another try, but if this site were to simply start reiterating the implementation/tools questions that are already covered elsewhere, this site will not likely make it out of private beta.