Summary
Where did “artificial intelligence” find its beginnings? A brief recount of the WWII years and the early beginnings of the programmable computer. The innovators, including Turing, von Neumann, and Wiener who led the way, and the new science “Cybernetics” whose mathematical formalization of adaptive feedback control processes became the predecessor to the dream of “artificial intelligence”.
Today, “artificial intelligence” is receiving new attention, six decades after its beginnings, and after several “winters” of loss of funding and failures to achieve its stated goals. It is appropriate to ask, “is it deja vu all over again?”.
The Monster That Ate Human Beings…
If you’ve been around long enough and are paying attention to the news of the latest in technological developments, you have probably not failed to notice that artificial intelligence (“AI”) (whatever that may encompass) is, in some form or another, reportedly about to become The Monster that Ate Human Beings (or perhaps, more generally, The Monster that Ate the World as We Know It). Is nothing sacred any more?
Yogi Berra (baseball fame) had a knack for his catchy phrases that seemed to be able to say it all, and with a tongue in cheek smile to match. I cannot resist the temptation to repeat his words (our title) as they seem to be forever applicable in situations like this.
I am, or course, referring to the monster, itself, which we might refer to as the “AI” revolution, where AI, of course, stands for “Artificial Intelligence”, whatever that might mean. At least one part of that phrase is probably aptly named “artificial”, but the other part may simply be a severe mishandling of the English language, or at the very least a dream seeking a birth event.
Why do I refer to it as Deja Vu all over again (in Yogi’s own words). Well, to look up the meaning, the mystery words refer to the illusion of seeing something that has already been seen before. Are you getting the message? Well, alright, perhaps a little history is in order in case you need to be reminded of the past.
Some Relevant History – WWII, The Programmable Computer, and the Advent of Cybernetics
At the start of World War II (1941 for the US), agile minds were at work thinking about problems whose solutions could really be useful if we could just find them. Along those lines, it was realized that it would really help if we could just come up with a machine or two that would do the dirty work for us, and provide quick solutions to otherwise very challenging but really important problems.
It was realized. for example. that if we could perfect radar, that would be really useful for giving advance warning of enemy aircraft hell-bent on practicing their bombing skills on unsuspecting civilians. And so, perfecting radar became a top priority.
In order to do more than just warn, but to actively combat this illicit activity on the part of the enemy, it would also be very useful if we could build a machine that would show us how to accurately aim our antiaircraft artillery to the very spot where the offending airplane would appear, and then allow us to fire our guns so that the explosive shell would arrive at that spot at exactly the same moment as the intruding aircraft. The result would not require further comment…
Now don’t think that this possibility did not go unnoticed or elicit serious consideration on the part of all concerned – rest assured it did, and it helped to spark the electronic digital computer revolution that followed.
We can trace that latter event (the coming of the electronic digital computer revolution) back at least, in part, to a classified wartime publication called “The Yellow Peril” (so named for its yellow cover and the fact that few could really understand it), authored by the mathematician Norbert Wiener. In this publication, Wiener took it upon himself to consider the problem of automatic control of antiaircraft artillery. This problem, and others like it, led Wiener and others to eventually identify a discipline which they would refer to simply as “Cybernetics” (which is from the Greek, and according to Wiener, the Greek root word means “steersman” – which seems to be an appropriate title).
For example, steering those guns to shoot down those blasted (or soon to be) bombers…
We mention Cybernetics here, since it is considered to be a predecessor to what would later come to be known as AI. For this reason, we will briefly delve further into the birth of Cybernetics in the next post.
The Rest of the Story in Brief
Returning now to the computer revolution, and to keep this story short, Wiener and the mathematician John von Neumann in the US, and others including the brilliant code-breaker Alan Turing in the UK, were marshaling their best thoughts and requirements which would soon lead to the concept and to the actual construction of a programmable electronic computer with memory, based on a binary symbol system known as Boolean Algebra (courtesy of the British mathematician/logician George Boole). And, as they say, “the rest is history”, and surely you know something about the rest of the story.
Is It Deja Vu All Over Again?
But, you ask, what does this have to do with the Deja Vu referred to in the title? Well, thank you for asking, for you see, that is the story to follow and we will spend some time looking into many aspects of this question and hopefully shedding some light on it for all who might be interested in delving further into the mystery of the “Monster that Ate Human Beings”.
Please stay tuned for the next exciting episode in this ongoing suspense saga! And by the way, thanks for tuning in and we’ll look forward to seeing you again shortly.