Podcast: Is AI Real?

Photo: Robotic arm made for MIT AI lab, 1972. In 1973, the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence (AI) was at a crossroads: Governments had grown skeptical of the research and were hesitant to continue pumping millions of dollars into projects with few actionable results. So, to examine what AI had done, the United Kingdom solicited a report from a famous mathematician named Sir James Lighthill. What happened next was controlled chaos, the sort of polite brawling that only PhD's in neat suits are capable of. AI researchers erupted with anger, and possibly for good reason: It turned out that Lighthill, whose report demolished AI, did not fully understand the field he was trying to crush.