Area of Study 3: Computer science: past and present
Extinguished philosophies lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules. - adapted from T. H. Huxley
Can Machines Think?
Do Machines Understand?
Are Machines Conscious?
The term “Artificial Intelligence” (AI) was first coined by John McCarthy in 1956.
McCarthy was a computer scientist at Dartmouth College.
He organised the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence in 1956, along with Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon.
In the proposal, McCarthy wrote:
“The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.”
That conference is usually considered the birth of AI as a formal field of research.
Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950):
“What will happen when a machine takes the part of A?”
This is understood to mean:
- the machine takes the human’s role in the Imitation Game
- the interrogator’s task is now to decide whether they are talking to a human or a machine
The new problem has the advantage of drawing a fairly sharp line between the physical and the intellectual capacities of a man
Q: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge.
Q: Add 34957 to 70764.
Q: I have K at my K1, and no other pieces. You have only K at K6 and R at R1. It is your move. What do you play?
The question and answer method seems to be suitable for introducing almost any one of the fields of human endeavour that we wish to include
Turing spends about 5 pages discussing machines. - Discrete state machines - Digital computers
We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Even this is a difficult decision. Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. This process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried.
I believe that in about fifty years’ time it will be possible, to programme computers, with a storage capacity of about 109, to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70 per cent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning. The original question, “Can machines think?” I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion. Nevertheless I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted. I believe further that no useful purpose is served by concealing these beliefs. The popular view that scientists proceed inexorably from well-established fact to well-established fact, never being influenced by any improved conjecture, is quite mistaken. Provided it is made clear which are proved facts and which are conjectures, no harm can result.