Artificial Intelligence in Christian Thought and Practice

In 1951, Marvin Minsky asked an imaginary mouse to navigate an imaginary maze. Together with Dean Edmonds, Marvin carefully connected three hundred vacuum tubes together with an assembly of motors and light bulbs, applying ideas about the wiring of neurons in human and animal brains. Minsky and Edmonds watched the virtual mouse's progress on a bank of lights and offered rewards when it moved toward its goal. Through repeated tries, the mouse learned to escape the maze. When researchers coined the term "artificial intelligence" (AI) five years later, they hoped to prove in one summer that every feature of learning and intelligence could be conducted by a machine.