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The cover of Machines Who Think

Machines Who Think

Pamela McCorduck

What were the founders of artificial intelligence trying to do, and why did they think machines could think?

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14 parts, about 30 minutes to read.

At a glance

Author
Pamela McCorduck
Parts
14 parts
Reading time
about 30 minutes

Why read it

  • You will see why a field the public declares dead may simply have split into quieter subfields such as vision, robotics and machine learning
  • You will learn how artificial intelligence became a celebrity science and was pulled into a commercial frenzy
  • You will be able to separate scientific progress from commercial hype, since the author says the boom confused the two

Who it is for

  • A reader of today's AI news who wants its history
  • A student of computer science or cognitive science
  • An investor wary of technology hype cycles

What the summary covers

  1. A personal inquiry into thinking machines1 min
  2. Before there were computers2 min
  3. Models of mind and symbols2 min
  4. The computer becomes a medium2 min
  5. A field receives a name1 min
  6. Symbols, decisions, and the Logic Theorist2 min
  7. Games as experiments1 min
  8. Resistance and its reasons2 min
  9. From general problem solving to physical robots2 min
  10. Language needs a world to refer to2 min
  11. Knowledge at work in chemistry and classrooms2 min
  12. What should thinking machines do?2 min
  13. The promise and danger of forging gods2 min
  14. Afterword: The Following Quarter Century of Artificial Intelligence7 min

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