Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- PART I BEGINNINGS
- PART II EARLY EXPLORATIONS: 1950S AND 1960S
- PART III EFFLORESCENCE: MID-1960S TO MID-1970S
- PART IV APPLICATIONS AND SPECIALIZATIONS: 1970s TO EARLY 1980s
- PART V “NEW-GENERATION” PROJECT
- PART VI ENTR'ACTE
- PART VII THE GROWING ARMAMENTARIUM: FROM THE 1980s ONWARD
- PART VIII MODERN AI: TODAY AND TOMORROW
- Index
- Plate section
PART II - EARLY EXPLORATIONS: 1950S AND 1960S
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- PART I BEGINNINGS
- PART II EARLY EXPLORATIONS: 1950S AND 1960S
- PART III EFFLORESCENCE: MID-1960S TO MID-1970S
- PART IV APPLICATIONS AND SPECIALIZATIONS: 1970s TO EARLY 1980s
- PART V “NEW-GENERATION” PROJECT
- PART VI ENTR'ACTE
- PART VII THE GROWING ARMAMENTARIUM: FROM THE 1980s ONWARD
- PART VIII MODERN AI: TODAY AND TOMORROW
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
If machines are to become intelligent, they must, at the very least, be able to do the thinking-related things that humans can do. The first steps then in the quest for artificial intelligence involved identifying some specific tasks thought to require intelligence and figuring out how to get machines to do them. Solving puzzles, playing games such as chess and checkers, proving theorems, answering simple questions, and classifying visual images were among some of the problems tackled by the early pioneers during the 1950s and early 1960s. Although most of these were laboratory-style, sometimes called “toy,” problems, some real-world problems of commercial importance, such as automatic reading of highly stylized magnetic characters on bank checks and language translation, were also being attacked. (As far as I know, Seymour Papert was the first to use the phrase “toy problem.” At a 1967 AI workshop I attended in Athens, Georgia, he distinguished among tau or “toy” problems, rho or real-world problems, and theta or “theory” problems in artificial intelligence. This distinction still serves us well today.)
In this part, I'll describe some of the first real efforts to build intelligent machines. Some of these were discussed or reported on at conferences and symposia – making these meetings important milestones in the birth of AI. I'll also do my best to explain the underlying workings of some of these early AI programs.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Quest for Artificial Intelligence , pp. 47 - 48Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009