Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Turing's idea constitutes the conceptual basis of what later became
known as Artificial Intelligence or AI. Some of the first practical AI
work came out of research concerning air defence. Between
1950
and
Alan Newell, a mathematician from Princeton, was running
a project at the McChord Field Air Defense Direction Center
in Tacoma, Washington. It concerned simulating radar patterns in
order to develop an understanding of man-machine interface issues.
In order to undertake the simulation the project used an IBM
card-programmed calculator. The use of a computer-like device to
simulate data inspired Newell to think of computers as possibly
being machines for the manipulation of symbols. Herbert Simon
from the Carnegie Institute of Technology found the McChord Field
work interesting for the same reasons. Newell and Simon, along with
Rand Programmer J. C. Shaw, collaborated on building a program
to prove logical theorems, the Newell-Simon-Shaw Logic Theorist,
which was completed in
1951
. This was arguably the first AI program,
avant la lettre
, since the term Artificial Intelligence had not then
been invented.
The term actually came into existence in
1952
. It was then that a
mathematician at Dartmouth, John McCarthy, organized a confer-
ence, 'The Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence'.
Now referred to as the 'Dartmouth Conference', this is regarded as
the beginnings of AI, as well as the point where it gained the name
by which it is now known. Among those participating in the con-
ference were Claude Shannon and Marvin Minsky, the latter now
recognized as one of the principle theorists of AI. The conference
represented a decisive shift from embodied, cybernetic models of
machine thought, to disembodied, logical, formalized systems. It
was also notable for the great confidence that the early AI researchers
had in its possibilities. Following the conference Newell and Simon
predicted that a computer would be world chess champion; that a
computer would compose aesthetically valuable music; a computer
would discover and prove an important unknown mathematical
1956
