At the present stage of research in artificial intelligence , machines are stil l remote from achieving a level of intelligence comparable in complexity to human thought. As computer applications become more sophisticated, however, and thus more influential in human affairs , it becomes increasingly important to understand both the capabilities and limitations of machine Intelligence and its potential impact on society. To this end, the artificial intelligence field was ex­amined in a systematic manner. The study was divided into two parts : (1) Delineation of areas of artificial intelligence, and postulatio " of hypothetical prod­ucts resulting from progress in the field , and (2) A judgmental portion, which involved appli­cations and implications of the products to society . For the latter purpose, a Delphi study was conducted among experts in the artificial intelligence field to solicit their opinion concerning prototype and com­mercial dates for the products, and the possibility and desirability of their applications and implications .In IJCAI-73: THIRD INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, 20-23 August 1973, Stanford University Stanford, California.

Selected quotes:"The Science Research Council has been receiving an increasing number of applications for research support in the rather broad field with mathematical engineering and biological aspects which often goes under the general description Articial Intelligence (Al). The research support applied for is sufficient in volume, and in variety of discipline involved, to demand that a general view of the field be taken by the Council itself.""To supplement the important mass of specialist and detailed information available to the Science Research Council its Chairman decided to commission an independent report by someone outside the Al field but with substantial general experience of research work in multidisciplinary fields including fields with mathematical, engineering and biological aspects."-----"Most workers in Al research and in related elds confess to a pro nounced feeling of disappointment in what has been achieved in the past twenty-five years. Workers entered the feld around 1950, and even around 1960, with high hopes that are very far from having been realised in 1972. In no part of the field have the discoveries made so far produced the major impact that was then promised.""In the meantime, claims and predictions regarding the potential results of Al research had been publicised which went even farther than the expectations of the majority of workers in the field whose embarrassments have been added to by the lamentable failure of such inflated predictions.""These general statements are expanded in a little more detail in the rest of section 3, which has been influenced by the views of large numbers of people listed in section 1 but which like the whole of this report represents in the last analysis only the personal view of the author. Before going into such detail he is inclined, as a mathematician, to single out one rather general cause for the disappointments that have been experienced: failure to recognise the implications of the 'combinatorial explosion'."See also: BBC TV - June 1973 - Lighthill Controversy Debate at the Royal Institution with Professor Sir James Lighthill, Professor Donald Michie, Professor Richard Gregory and Professor John McCarthy.Also in Lighthill, J., Sutherland, N. S., Needham, R. M., Longuet-Higgins, H. C., and Michie, D. (Eds.), Artificial Intelligence: A Paper Symposium. Science Research Council of Great Britain.

Sociologists are concerned to predict the effect of changes on future society.But is prediction in principle possible when intelligence is involved? Ifintelligence is the production of novelty, accurate prediction might seem to bestrictly impossible. However this may be, it seems that the present troubleabout social prediction is simply that there are no adequate theoreticalmodels of societies. This means that politicians are almost powerless topredict, plan, or control, except with incredible errors. We find ourselves injust this position in trying to assess the implications of future intelligence.Machine Intelligence 6

E.A. Feigenbaum and J. Feldman (Eds.). Computers and Thought. McGraw-Hill, 1963. This collection includes twenty classic papers by such pioneers as A. M. Turing and Marvin Minsky who were behind the pivotal advances in artificially simulating human thought processes with computers. All Parts are available as downloadable pdf files; most individual chapters are also available separately. COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE. A. M. Turing. CHESS-PLAYING PROGRAMS AND THE PROBLEM OF COMPLEXITY. Allen Newell, J.C. Shaw and H.A. Simon. SOME STUDIES IN MACHINE LEARNING USING THE GAME OF CHECKERS. A. L. Samuel. EMPIRICAL EXPLORATIONS WITH THE LOGIC THEORY MACHINE: A CASE STUDY IN HEURISTICS. Allen Newell J.C. Shaw and H.A. Simon. REALIZATION OF A GEOMETRY-THEOREM PROVING MACHINE. H. Gelernter. EMPIRICAL EXPLORATIONS OF THE GEOMETRY-THEOREM PROVING MACHINE. H. Gelernter, J.R. Hansen, and D. W. Loveland. SUMMARY OF A HEURISTIC LINE BALANCING PROCEDURE. Fred M. Tonge. A HEURISTIC PROGRAM THAT SOLVES SYMBOLIC INTEGRATION PROBLEMS IN FRESHMAN CALCULUS. James R. Slagle. BASEBALL: AN AUTOMATIC QUESTION ANSWERER. Green, Bert F. Jr., Alice K. Wolf, Carol Chomsky, and Kenneth Laughery. INFERENTIAL MEMORY AS THE BASIS OF MACHINES WHICH UNDERSTAND NATURAL LANGUAGE. Robert K. Lindsay. PATTERN RECOGNITION BY MACHINE. Oliver G. Selfridge and Ulric Neisser. A PATTERN-RECOGNITION PROGRAM THAT GENERATES, EVALUATES, AND ADJUSTS ITS OWN OPERATORS. Leonard Uhr and Charles Vossler. GPS, A PROGRAM THAT SIMULATES HUMAN THOUGHT. Allen Newell and H.A. Simon. THE SIMULATION OF VERBAL LEARNING BEHAVIOR. Edward A. Feigenbaum. PROGRAMMING A MODEL OF HUMAN CONCEPT FORMULATION. Earl B. Hunt and Carl I. Hovland. SIMULATION OF BEHAVIOR IN THE BINARY CHOICE EXPERIMENT Julian Feldman. A MODEL OF THE TRUST INVESTMENT PROCESS. Geoffrey P. E. Clarkson. A COMPUTER MODEL OF ELEMENTARY SOCIAL BEHAVIOR. John T. Gullahorn and Jeanne E. Gullahorn. TOWARD INTELLIGENT MACHINES. Paul Armer. STEPS TOWARD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Marvin Minsky. A SELECTED DESCRIPTOR-INDEXED BIBLIOGRAPHY TO THE LITERATURE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Marvin Minsky.

This listing is intended as an introduction to the literature on Artificial Intelligence, €”i.e., to the literature dealing with the problem of making machines behave intelligently. We have divided this area into categories and cross-indexed the references accordingly. Large bibliographies without some classification facility are next to useless. This particular field is still young, but there are already many instances in which workers have wasted much time in rediscovering (for better or for worse) schemes already reported. In the last year or two this problem has become worse, and in such a situation just about any information is better than none. This bibliography is intended to serve just that purpose-to present some information about this literature. The selection was confined mainly to publications directly concerned with construction of artificial problem-solving systems. Many peripheral areas are omitted completely or represented only by a few citations.IRE Trans. on Human Factors in Electronics, HFE-2, pages 39-55

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

Between 1946 and 1956, a number of BBC radio broadcasts were made by pioneers in the fields of computing, artificial intelligence and cybernetics. Although no sound recordings of the broadcasts survive, transcripts are held at the BBC's Written Archives Centre at Caversham in the UK. This paper is based on a study of these transcripts, which have received little attention from historians. The paper surveys the range of computer-related broadcasts during 1946-1956 and discusses some recurring themes from the broadcasts, especially the relationship of'artificial intelligence' to human intelligence.

RAND Corporation Paper P-987, Santa Monica, Calif

Also in  Discovery, 14:151; and in Proceedings of the IRE, October, 41:1230 Spectator, No. 6424, 177-178,

An excellent place to start. In this article, Turing not only proposes the Imitation Game in its original form, but addresses nine different arguments against AI, including Goedel's theorem and consciousness. Several recent arguments against AI are variations on the ones Turing enumerates. 'I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous....The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the "imitation game."' I.—COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE. Mind 59, p. 433-460 (PDF from Oxford University Press).