Building the Second Mind: 1956 and the Origins of Artificial Intelligence Computing

Building the Second Mind: 1956 and the Origins of Artificial Intelligence Computing tells the history of the origins of AI. As the field that seeks to do things that would be considered intelligent if a human being did them, AI is a constant of human thought. Yet it was impossible until the digital computer was invented during WWII, and the field itself was not declared until 1956.

AI, the fieldthat seeks to do things that would be considered intelligent if ahuman being did them, is a universal of human thought,developed over centuries. Various efforts to carry this out appearin the forms of robotic machinery and more abstract tools andsystems of symbols intended to artificially contrive knowledge.The latter sounds like alchemy, and in a sense it certainly is.There is no gold more precious than knowledge.