Machines Who Think: A Personal Inquiry into the History and Prospects of Artificial Intelligence [Paperback]

Pamela McCorduck (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 2004 | ISBN-10: 1568812051 | ISBN-13: 978-1568812052 | Edition: 2

Pamela McCorduck first went among the artificial intelligentsia when the field was fresh and new, and asked the scientists engaged in it what they were doing and why. She saw artificial intelligence as the scientific apotheosis of one of the most enduring, glorious, often amusing, and sometimes alarming, traditions of human culture: the endless fascination with artifacts that think. Machines Who Think was translated into many languages, became an international cult classic, and stayed in print for nearly twenty years. Now, Machines Who Think is back, along with an extended addition that brings the field up to date in the last quarter century, including its scientific and its public faces. McCorduck shows how, from a slightly dubious fringe science, artificial intelligence has moved slowly (though not always steadily) to a central place in our everyday lives, and how it will be even more crucial as the World Wide Web moves into its next generation.

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

The review you are reading was written by a human, not a machine. This fact would no doubt disappoint some of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, who would have thought that by the 21st century a computer would be able to read a book, consider it in the context of other knowledge and express some thoughtful opinions about it. On the other hand, the human who wrote this review was aided in researching and preparing it by telecommunications and computer networks, including the Internet, that owe a big part of their existence —and even more of their smooth functioning—to theories and concepts that arose from artificial-intelligence research. The enormous, if stealthy, influence of AI bears out many of the wonders foretold 25 years ago in Machines Who Think, Pamela McCorduck’s groundbreaking survey of the history and prospects of the field. A novelist at the time (she has since gone on to write and consult widely on the intellectual impact of computing), McCorduck got to the founders of the field while they were still feeling their way into a new science. Her novelist’s eye for detail and ear for style formed a book that this magazine’s review of the first edition described as "delicious." When Machines Who Think was first published in 1979, it was an up-to-the-moment history. But in a digital world, that moment was an eternity ago, so McCorduck has appended a 30,000-word afterword to bring the reader up-to-date. The original text has been wisely left unaltered (including a few passages that now seem quaint, such as the explanation of the difference between hardware and software). Her story begins long before the advent of computing, in ancient thinking about the human need to make something in our own image. McCorduck sees AI research as the continuation of a long tradition of thought, encompassing everything from the Ten Commandments’ prohibition against idols to Mary Shelley and her Frankenstein monster. But the book, like the field, really doesn’t begin to take off until computing machines—mechanical at first, then eventually digital—enter the picture. McCorduck details the thoughts of theorists such as Alan Turing (who believed machine intelligence was possible) and John von Neumann (who didn’t) and devotes considerable space to work on chess- and checkers-playing machines, which was the early public face of AI. She notes seminal events, particularly the Dartmouth Conference, a 1956 workshop where much of the groundwork for future research was laid by such men as Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy and two upstarts who would be hugely influential, Alan Newell and Herbert Simon. Newell and Simon were in large part responsible for a shift in thinking away from the idea that machine intelligence must mimic the brain physically, an approach that drew parallels between neurons and digital devices, and toward the view that it should simulate human thought processes—what became known as the information-processing model. McCorduck shows how this idea developed over the years, how problems that were first seen as "impossibly nonmechanical" were solved and how these solutions "slowly began to be brought into the domain of ordinary computational processes." That slow infusion of AI into everyday computing picked up speed after 1979, and in the afterword McCorduck gives a taste of these advances and of recent research in robotics, natural-language processing and other fields that are, in essence, AI spin-offs. This part of the book feels sketchy, and the author acknowledges that it is not meant as a definitive survey of the field’s past 25 years. But the reader is left wanting more. Still, taken together, the original and the afterword form a rich and fascinating history. Along the way, McCorduck introduces us to some interesting characters, not the least of whom are the naysayers. She devotes a chapter to Hubert Dreyfus, the philosopher who in the 1960s became a thorn in the side of researchers with his public pronouncements about the futility of their work (they had the last laugh, however, when a machine beat him at chess). And she writes about those thinkers, most recently the technologist Bill Joy, for whom the great hopes of AI have been replaced by great fears, of machines that might rule rather than rival humans. The book is described as a "personal inquiry," and now, as then, McCorduck leaves little doubt as to where her personal allegiance lies. From the title to the very last sentence, she is a believer in what she calls a "heroic enterprise." She may admit that researchers have a long way to go, but she dismisses the doubters as well: AI, she writes, is "neither the field of dreams nor the field of nightmares portrayed." Were she to produce a 50th-anniversary edition in 2029, she might be somewhat surprised, but surely very pleased, to see it reviewed by a machine who thinks.

Henry Fountain is a writer and editor at the New York Times, specializing in science and technology.

Review

" my money, Machines Who Think continues to be the most reliable source on the first couple of decades."" -Herbert A. Simon, March 2004
""If you are interested in how the pioneers of AI approached the problem of getting a machine to think like a human--a story told here with verve, wit, intelligence and perception--there is no better place to go than this book."" -John Casti, NATURE, April 2004
""The enormous, if stealthy, influence of AI bears out many of the wonders foretold 25 years ago in Machines Who Think, Pamela McCorduck's groundbreaking survey of the history and prospects of the field…. [T]aken together, the original and the afterword form a rich and fascinating history."" -Scientific American, May 2004"

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: A K Peters/CRC Press; 2 edition (March 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568812051
• ISBN-13: 978-1568812052
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.3 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,504,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An insightful view of AI from an insider in the field. April 10, 2004

By Dr. Lee D. Carlson HALL OF FAMEVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

The field of artificial intelligence, in terms of its research content, and the confidence it expresses in the results of this research, has executed a roller coaster ride in the last five decades. There have been many proposals, many leads not going anywhere, but just as many leads showing great promise but were abandoned. The reasons why they were abandoned are unclear, but many researchers in artificial intelligence have let them themselves be persuaded that their results do not reflect real intelligence. This has thwarted the development of many promising areas in artificial intelligence, which could have been highly developed by now.

The author, in this new edition of her book, has given the reader her opinions of the status of artificial intelligence in the twenty-five years after the first edition of the book. Her assessment of the last twenty-five years is in general optimistic, but her review concentrates mostly on research in the academic setting. There have also been dramatic advances in artificial intelligence in the commercial sector in the last twenty-five years, but many of these are difficult to document, since issues of propriety arise in the business environment. The many applications that are used by business and industry are practical proof of the rise of machine intelligence in the last twenty-five years, and many of these make use of the academic developments that the author discusses in this book.

The self-doubts and concentrated attention expressed by various researchers are well documented by the author, and some interesting historical anecdotes are included. The author describes the "odd paradox" in artificial intelligence as one where the its practical successes are absorbed into the domains in which they found application.... Once assimilated, they become "silent partners" alongside other (non-intelligent) approaches. This reinforces the belief that the intelligent applications were not intelligent in the first place, and are then viewed merely as "valuable automatic helpers". This scenario has been played out many times in the history of artificial intelligence, and, even worse, the fact that the workings of these applications were understood made many assert that this was proof of their non-intelligence. If a process or algorithm is understood, it cannot be intelligent. This bias, the author correctly observes, continues to this day. Regardless of these beliefs or prejudices, the fact remains though that many of today's computers and machines are packed full of intelligence, albeit in different levels, and these levels will dramatically increase in the next twenty-five years.

Researchers in artificial intelligence have been accused of exaggerating the status of machine intelligence, and similar to the same exaggerations that occur in other fields, which arise many times from pressures to obtain funding, these accusations do have some truth to them. But the author points out a case where the funding was cancelled due to the project not being "extravagant enough." This is an interesting historical fact, and one that illustrates the large swings in confidence that have plagued AI research from the beginning.

The strong emphasis on emulating human intelligence has been dampened in recent years, with researchers realizing, refreshingly, that human intelligence is not the only kind in nature. It is in retrospect quite surprising that silicon-based machines were thought to be able to mimic the processes and powers of biological systems. The author quotes one researcher as saying that "Silicon intelligence would surely be different from human intelligence". This is indeed correct, and one can expect many different types of intelligence to reside in future machines, each of these types emphasizing particular tasks, but being general enough to think in many domains. Maybe a better word for describing the field would be to call it `Alien Intelligence', so as to emphasize the (non-human) idiosyncrasies of these different intelligences.

With very exceptions, the philosophical community has been against the possibility of artificial intelligence. This continues to this day, and the author discusses some of the philosophical tirades leveled against artificial intelligence since the first edition of the book. Researchers in AI have taken the time (unfortunately) to answer some of these criticisms, but there is also a trend, which hopefully will continue, to ignore them and instead spend time on what is important, namely the design and construction of intelligent machines. There is no penalty in ignoring philosophical criticism; it lends no constructive insight into artificial intelligence. However there is a great penalty taken in the form of wasted hours in attempting to answer the vague and impractical claims of philosophers. Ironically, there have been a few renowned philosophers that have left the practice of philosophy and have entered into research into artificial intelligence (and have done a fine job in this regard).

The author also shares with the reader her personal insights into artificial intelligence, and these are interesting considering her involvement with some of the major academic experts in AI. She describes her bias in thinking of (mobile) robots as the sole representative of artificial intelligence. This bias has been alleviated to a large degree in the last decade, but many still equate artificial intelligence to the presence of bipedal robots wandering around performing useful tasks or possibly acting as adversaries to human beings. The latter view of course is very popular in Hollywood interpretations of artificial intelligence. The real truth though is that (immobile) machines, be they servers in networks, laptop computers, or other types of machines, can exhibit high levels of intelligence, depending on what kind of "software" or "mind" is overlaid on them.

The most important thing to be settled for the field of artificial intelligence, and this is brought out also in many of the author's remarks, is a general methodology for gauging machine intelligence. The Turing test is too subjective and tied too much to measures of human intelligence. The AI community definitely needs to arrive at quantitative measures of machine intelligence in order to assess progress and allow the business community to judge more accurately whether a certain level of machine intelligence is needed for their organizations. Read more ›

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Update to a Classic January 17, 2005

By John Matlock

Format:Paperback

Twenty five years ago Pamela McCorduck wrote a definitive book on Artificial Intelligence. She first went among the artificial intelligentsia when the field was fresh and new, and she asked the scientists engaged in it what they were doing and why. She saw artificial intelligence as the scientific apotheosis of one of the most enduring, glorious, often amusing, and sometimes alarming, traditions of human culture: the endless fascination with artifacts that think.

Long out of print, it became a classic, often quoted, but not often read. Now it's back and in a new edition with an extended afterword that brings the field up to date in the last quarter century, including its scientific and public faces. McCorduck shows how, from a slightly dubious fringe science, artificial intelligence has moved slowly to a central place in our everyday lives, and how it will be even more crucial as the World Wide Web moves into its next generation.

3.0 out of 5 stars overrated February 19, 2013

By peejay

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a book written in the late 1970s about the early history of the field of Artificial Intelligence. The book reflects a considerable bias towards the part of this field that came out of the Dartmouth conference (McCarthy, Simon, Newell, Misky, etc). The first 2/3 of the book are good as historical context, though the book misses some things (eg at this time it was not yet known about Alan Turing's work with computers during the world war II). The book is, however, rather biased by the Dartmouth crowd. for example, there is little attention paid to the perceptron. Yet, all in all I would have given 4* to the book if it had stopped at 2/3, if nothing else because it is a good read. The last part is difficult to read. Twice I started this book, and twice I stopped before page 400. So overall it gets 3*