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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nPamela McCorduck:<\/strong> My story is unique\u2014no one else could tell it. I knew the founding fathers of AI both professionally and socially from the time the field was barely underway. I knew that these weren\u2019t nefarious characters, planning to make terrible mischief in society. They were scientists, hoping to model human intelligence scientifically, by using this new and dynamic instrument called the computer. I was there when a speech understanding program that could understand a thousand spoken words (albeit in a very limited field) was a triumphant achievement. When I moved to Manhattan and found myself in literary circles, I\u2019d say to public intellectuals: \u201cArtificial Intelligence? This could be important.\u201d Of course they laughed\u2014uproariously, or condescendingly, or in utter disbelief. A machine thinking? How silly is that? This could be important<\/em> was my mantra for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n insideBIGDATA:<\/strong> You\u2019ve experienced first hand a number of \u201cAI\u201d winters. What makes this time around, with all the excitement around the field, different?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pamela McCorduck:<\/strong> First, I\u2019d like to unpack that term, \u201cAI winter.\u201d What it really meant was that a period had come along when research in AI couldn\u2019t easily be monetized. I went back and looked at the titles of research papers published during the first so-called AI winter, the early and mid-eighties. Fundamental research was being published, research that would undergird future AI applications (e.g., major algorithms around machine learning but only when the technology could accommodate them, a few decades later). <\/p>\n\n\n\n But the 1980s was the decade of the Reagan administration, when people brought in to guide and fund AI research, especially in the Department of Defense, were ideologically committed to monetizing government research. When the research didn\u2019t immediately yield itself to obvious commercial applications, the funders went looking to support work closer to commercial realization. What we see in AI\u2019s success right now\u2014machine learning, for example\u2014is the result of research done during that decade. When administrations change and funding agencies can take a longer view, end of \u201cwinter.\u201d Of course present publicly lauded success draws young researchers to join in the excitement, so youngsters flock to the field. Is another AI winter coming, as I read recently? Could be. One of the leading scientists in machine learning told me\u2014and this is in my book\u2014that machine learning has gone as far as it can go, and he was looking for different approaches to push AI forward. Machine learning apps<\/em> will proliferate until the end of time it seems, but that\u2019s not research. It\u2019s development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n insideBIGDATA:<\/strong> How do you feel about the way people\/companies play loose with the term \u201cAI\u201d? As a result do you feel the general public is getting the wrong impression about the technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pamela McCorduck:<\/strong> I\u2019m not a linguistic purist when it comes to AI. Our model of intelligence is humans, and what do you know? To perform intelligent behavior, humans use all sorts of approaches, from pattern recognition to the highest kind of symbolic reasoning and expressions. We read faces and other kinds of body language; sometimes we take our time, and sometimes we jump to conclusions. What\u2019s interesting to me is how AI has enlarged the very notion of intelligence. We once believed humans were the only species that exhibited intelligent behavior. Were we wrong! Now we\u2019re looking at non-human intelligent behavior with more respect. Journalism about AI is so varied\u2014the new Jerusalem; the end of civilization as we know it\u2014that the public can think anything it wants. And yes, AI will change things profoundly. We just don\u2019t know how yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/insidebigdata.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Pamela-McCorduck_book_cover.jpg\")
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