... The literature does not include any general discussion of the outstanding problems of this field. In this article, an attempt will be made to separate out, analyze, and find the relations between some of these problems. Analysis will be supported with enough examples from the literature to serve the introductory function of a review article, but there remains much relevant work not described here.Proc. Institute of Radio Engineers 49, p. 8-30

Men typically communicate with computers in a variety of artificial,stylized, unambiguous languages that are better adapted to the machinethan to the man. For convenience and speed, many future computercenteredsystems will require men to communicate with computers innatural language. The business executive, the military commander, and thescientist need to ask questions of the computer in ordinary English, andto have the computer answer the questions directly. Baseball is a first steptoward this goal.Proc. Western Joint Computer Conference 19:555-570.

MH-1 is a motorized and sensitized servomanipulator operated by the TX-O computer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It serves as an experimental vehicle to explore the feasibility of direct relations between a digital computer and the physical world with which this computer is concerned. Usually, a human interpreter stands between the computer and the physical world. Instead, the TX-O computer in the MH-1 system is programmed to perform by itself some of the functions normally assigned to the human intermediary; namely, to perceive the world, to appreciate it, and to determine a reasonable course of action after a goal has been specified for the hand. The data processing tools used are, rather than numerical operations on quantitative signals, pattern recognition and simulation of higher cognitive processes such as awareness and understanding. This paper describes some of the experiments performed with MH-1 and the mechanisms upon which the capabilities of MH-1 are based.

The complete rules for coding in Information Processing Language-V (IPL-V), and the documentation of extensions incorporated since publication of the Information Processing Language-V Manual. A summary of extensions and the minor modifications to the language is contained in the final section. An index, a list of the basic IPL-V processes, and a full-scale copy of the coding sheet appear at the end of the Memorandum.See also: Google Books.Prentice·Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

This inquiry examines a technique for automatically classifying (indexing) documents according to their subject content. The task, in essence, is to have a computing machine read a document and on the basis of the occurrence of selected clue words decide to which of many subject categories the document in question belongs. This paper describes the design, execution and evaluation of a modest experimental study aimed at testing empirically one statistical technique for automatic indexing.

In von Foerster, H. (ed) Illinois Symposium on Principles of Self-Organization, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL (1960)

Man-computer symbiosis is an expected development in cooperative interaction between men and electronic computers. It will involve very close coupling between the human and the electronic members of the partnership. The main aims are 1) to let computers facilitate formulative thinking as they now facilitate the solution of formulated problems, and 2) to enable men and computers to cooperate in making decisions and controlling complex situations without inflexible dependence on predetermined programs. In the anticipated symbiotic partnership, men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluations. Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking. Preliminary analyses indicate that the symbiotic partnership will perform intellectual operations much more effectively than man alone can perform them. Prerequisites for the achievement of the effective, cooperative association include developments in computer time sharing, in memory components, in memory organization, in programming languages, and in input and output equipment. IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, HFE-1, pp 4-11. See also: ACM Digital Library citation: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=612433.

This is an attempt to analyze attitudes and arguments brought forth by questions like "Can machines think?" and "Can machines exhibit intelligence?" Its purpose is to improve the climate which surrounds research in the field of machine or artificial intelligence. Its goal is not to convince those who answer the above questions negatively that they are wrong (although an attempt will be made to refute some of the negative arguments) but that they should be tolerant of research investigating these questions. The negative attitudes existent today tend to inhibit such research.Reprinted in Feigenbaum & Feldman, Computers and Thought (1963).Also in Datamation 9(3), March 1963, pp.34-38.Symposium on Bionics, Rand Technical Report 60 600, pp. 13-19

Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery, Vol 7, pp. 102-128

This is the first clear call for the separation of knowledge and inference procedure in AI. In this paper McCarthy advocates using predicate logic as a declarative representation of knowledge and first-order logic as the inference procedure.Additional notes on this landmark paper at http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/mcc59/mcc59.html.Bar-Hilel's comments in the discussion section from the conference are also interesting:"PROF. Y. BAR-HILLEL: Dr. McCarthy's paper belongs in the Journal of Half-Baked Ideas, the creation of which was recently proposed by Dr. I. J. Good. Dr. McCarthy will probably be the first to admit this. Before he goes on to bake his ideas fully, it might be well to give him some advice and raise some objections. He himself mentions some possible objections, but I do not think that he treats them with the full consideration they deserve; there are others he does not mention.For lack of time, I shall not go into the first part of his paper, although I think that it contains a lot of highly unclear philosophical, or pseudo-philosophical assumptions. I shall rather spend my time in commenting on the example he works out in his paper at some length. Before I start, let me voice my protest against the general assumption of Dr. McCarthy -- slightly caricatured -- that a machine, if only its program is specified with a sufficient degree of carelessness, will be able to carry out satisfactory even rather difficult tasks."In Proceedings of the Symposium on the Mechanization of Thought Processes, National Physical Laboratory 1:77-84