As scientists laid the foundations of artificial intelligence, Pamela McCorduck was there. McCorduck, an author who wrote some of the first novels and histories about AI and was a generous friend of CMU, died Oct. 18. McCorduck described herself as an eyewitness to the birth and growth of AI. She was possibly best known for her 1979 book, "Machines Who Think," which chronicles the history of AI from the dreams and nightmares of ancient poets and prophets to the scientific discoveries of the 20th century. The novel contains the famous quote, "Artificial intelligence began with the ancient wish to forge the gods."

Forty-one years ago, Pamela McCorduck wrote a history of the still-young field of artificial intelligence. It was incredibly ambitious, and the result was a superb work of scholarship. She updated that book, Machines Who Think, twenty-five years later, and declared then that she wouldn't write another volume on the subject. Fortunately for all of us, she went back on that vow. "A history exists of all this, a human story about the invention of artificial intelligence by a handful of brilliant scientists," she writes in This Could Be Important, which went on sale last month (Carnegie Mellon Press).

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is once again a promising technology. The last time this happened was in the 1980s, and before that, the late 1950s through the early 1960s. In between, commentators often described AI as having fallen into "Winter," a period of decline, pessimism, and low funding. Understanding the field's more than six decades of history is difficult because most of our narratives about it have been written by AI insiders and developers themselves, most often from a narrowly American perspective.[1] In addition, the trials and errors of the early years are scarcely discussed in light of the current hype around AI, heightening the risk that past mistakes will be repeated. How can we make better sense of AI's history and what might it tell us about the present moment?

Machines Who Think: A Personal Inquiry into the History and Prospect of Artificial Intelligence, Pamela McCorduck, San Francisco, California, Freeman, 1979, 375 pp., ISBN 0-7167-11135-4. McCorduck's Machines Who Think after Twenty-Five Years The frame tale provided therein was basically that AI was "an idea that has pervaded Western intellectual history, a dream in urgent need of being realized" (p. The primary principle of selection governing her account is that AI "did not originate in the search for solutions to practical problems…. I like to think of artificial intelligence as the scientific apotheosis of a veritable cultural tradition" (p. However, recent historical research, which includes a reexamination of McCorduck's own interview transcripts, has begun to uncover other possible narratives, es-Book Review It is a tribute to her powers of observation and her conversational style that none has really proven more successful than Pamela McCorduck's Machines Who Think, Currently, it is the first source cited on the AI Topics web site on the history of AI.

The story of Artificial Intelligence is as old as Greek antiquity (Greek myths incorporated the idea of intelligent robots). It all began with myths, stories and rumors of artificial beings gifted with intelligence by master craftsmen. As Pamela McCorduck puts it: "Artificial Intelligence began with an ancient wish to forge the Gods." McCorduck was popular for penning books concerning the history and philosophical significance of Artificial Intelligence. But, when were the seeds of modern Artificial Intelligence planted? In the 1940s, a programmable digital computer was invented – a machine based on the abstract essence of mathematical reasoning.

The review you are reading was written by a human, not a machine. This fact would no doubt disappoint some of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, who would have thought that by the 21st century a computer would be able to read a book, consider it in the context of other knowledge and express some thoughtful opinions about it. On the other hand, the human who wrote this review was aided in researching and preparing it by telecommunications and computer networks, including the Internet, that owe a big part of their existence and even more of their smooth functioning to theories and concepts that arose from artificial-intelligence research. The enormous, if stealthy, influence of AI bears out many of the wonders foretold 25 years ago in Machines Who Think, Pamela McCorduck s groundbreaking survey of the history and prospects of the field. A novelist at the time (she has since gone on to write and consult widely on the intellectual impact of computing), McCorduck got to the founders of the field while they were still feeling their way into a new science.

Machines Who Think: A Personal Inquiry into the History and Prospect of Artificial Intelligence, Pamela McCorduck, San Francisco, California, Freeman, 1979, 375 pp., ISBN 0-7167-11135-4.

Various groups of ascertainable individuals have been granted the status of "persons" under American law, while that status has been denied to other groups. This article examines various analogies that might be drawn by courts in deciding whether to extend "person" status to intelligent machines, and the limitations that might be placed upon such recognition. As an alternative analysis, this article questions the legal status of various human/machine interfaces, and notes the difficulty in establishing an absolute point beyond which legal recognition will not extend.