Waxy.org is the sandbox of Andy Baio, an independent journalist and programmer living in Portland, Oregon. I created Upcoming.org and some other stuff too.

Contact Me: log@waxy.org or waxpancake on AIM

The Machine That Changed the World: The Thinking Machine

Posted Jun 6, 2008 (Updated Jun 11, 2008)

The fourth episode of The Machine That Changed the World covers the history of artificial intelligence and the challenges that come from trying to teach computers to think and learn like us.

(Previously: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)

Key People/Concepts:
Jerome B. Wiesner, Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Oliver Selfridge of Lincoln Labs, Claude Shannon, Freddy Robot at the University of Edinburgh, Sir James Lighthill, Terry Winograd's SHRDLU, Edward Feigenbaum's work on expert systems, Doug Lenat's Cyc project, Oliver Sacks, neural networks, NETtalk

Interviews:
Marvin Minsky (MIT), Hubert Dreyfus (UC Berkeley), Edward Feigenbaum (Stanford University), Hans Moravec (Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute), Doug Lenat (University of Texas, Austin), Dean Pomerleau (Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute), Terrence Sejnowski (Salk Institute)

Next up...
The last episode: The World at Your Fingertips. Computer networks, including the Internet, and their global impact on communication and privacy.

3 Comments (Add Yours)

Jun 8, 2008
9:09 AM

Cristiano Betta wrote:

Wow, this part is actually quite heavy on AI and Neural Networking theory.

Sep 7, 2008
3:30 AM

Mahone Dunbar wrote:

Thanks for posting this. I watched, and taped, the original program back in the nineties; however, this chapter on attempts to build an AI failed to tape for some reason. My subsequent attempts to get PBS to run the series again, or buy a copy of the series online, failed. Many thanks for giving me a second shot at watching a very informative piece of work. I was amazed at how much computers have advanced since the original series aired in 1992. The one thing I think wasn't distinguished in the program was the difference between intelligence and consciousness. Computers are definitely intelligent. The true goal of AI research is to make a machine that either achieves "consciousness" or can mimic it so perfectly.

Oct 9, 2008
12:35 PM

Bruce Wolf wrote:

Thanks a lot for posting these episodes. I have been looking for a DVD of this series - ever since the VHS tape went off the market. I had taped the series onto VHS tape myself, but I watched it so many time, it became unplayable.

Thanks again...

Leave a comment

Ads via The Deck

November 21, 2008

Freddie Wong responds to the Bike Hero controversy — "What's up, viral marketing douchebags? I'm gonna show you punks how a real man plays Bike Hero on Expert!"

Google's collaborative pixel art in Google Spreadsheets — they're even sharing the template and tips on making your own

Perspectives, video interviews with all dialogue removed — um, uh, hmm

Robbie Cooper's Immersion, heads-on video of kids playing video games — from the guy who made Alter Ego, the book of people with their online avatars

Clive Thompson's long NYT feature on the the Netflix Prize and singular value decomposition — the same technique we used on Memeorandum Colors (via)

Boston College to stop offering email accounts to new students — students come in with fully-formed online identities, so they'll just redirect to their existing email addresses (via)

Pixel typography from the 16th century — from an Italian embroidery guide (via)

19-year-old commits suicide live on Justin.tv — it should surprise nobody that he was egged on by 4chan, who always adore an hero

November 20, 2008

"Bike Hero" video was Activision's viral marketing, as suspected — I still think it's great, but Derek disagrees; then again, I always assumed it was faked to some degree

Kottke on Brian Battjer's I Keep A Diary — no joke, I just spent the last hour reading his photojournals of South Korea, Japan, Dubai, and NYC

Star Trek theme played on a homebrew Wii theremin — here's how it works (via)

Chicken Head Tracking — strangely hypnotic, other birds have the same ability (via)

Torben Sko's experiments with camera-tracked head gestures in first-person games — he uses a simple webcam, FaceAPI, and the Half-Life 2 engine

Cover Browser's collection of every TV Guide magazine cover — trivia: Macrovision sold TV Guide to an equity firm for $1.00 last month, less than the cost of a single issue

Dr. Awesome game for iPhone lets you perform surgery on your friends — perfectly nailed as Qix meets Trauma Center, it imports names from your address book

November 19, 2008

Metafilter on John Ziegler vs. Nate Silver (and David Foster Wallace) — great writeup of a perfectly terrible person's recent misadventures

Google to shut down Lively next month — the most baffling of all Google products, this one is closing after less than six months

Jack Handey's The Plan — it's foolproof (via)

Snaptell, product lookup for the iPhone — like Shazam for product packaging, price comparison's coming soon

Interactive augmented reality demo in Flash with Papervision — very quick with my iSight, I get much higher FPS than in the video (via)

Very lucky kid on The Price is Right — still, nothing beats Daniel

Space Invaders anime video produced for 30th anniversary — "All this time we've been... and all they wanted to do was... We're horrible people!" (via)

Derek Powazek revives Kvetch! a decade later — appropriately backed by Twitter, a primary outlet for kvetching

November 18, 2008

Bike Hero, biking a Guitar Hero level in the real world — most likely a commercial viral, and maybe even fake, but does it matter? beyond awesome

Chuck Klosterman reviews Chinese Democracy — mostly posting this just to beat Rex to it

The A.V. Club's 27 popular websites that became books — though they missed Belle de Jour, The Washingtonienne, Fucked Company, Fark, and ZUG

Speed Guitar goes to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art — every hour, on the hour, for one solid minute of metal complete with gothic arch and smoke machine

MGMT's "Kids" on the iPhone Ocarina — "the iPhone Ocarina officially replaces the recorder as the nerdiest instrument I can play"

Mena Trott responds to Valleywag article about their Disneyland vacation — my favorite was Space Mountain Snob

LIFE Magazine photo archive hosted by Google — millions of high-res photos, most never published