Pamela McCorduck: Author and historian of artificial intelligence; wrote Machines Who Think (1979) after interviewing AI's founders, plus The Fifth Generation, The Edge of Chaos, and The Futures of Women.
What this episode covers
Pamela McCorduck describes how, as an English major and novelist, she came to write Machines Who Think, the first personal history of AI, by interviewing its founders while they were still at the height of their careers. She traces AI's roots back through Frankenstein, the Golem, and even robots in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, distinguishing the welcoming Hellenic view of robots from the blasphemy-fearing Hebraic view. She shares warm personal memories of figures like Herbert Simon, Allen Newell, Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, and Edward Feigenbaum, and her time at the Santa Fe Institute studying complexity. McCorduck argues the 'AI winter' is a commerce problem, not a science problem, and reframes existential-threat fears as a defensive 'male gaze.' She closes by revealing she was drawn to AI partly to disprove the idea that intelligence resides only in the male cranium.
The guest's own work
Machines Who Think
Pamela McCorduck
“in 1979 your book machines who think was published in it you interview some of the early AI pioneers”— Lex Fridman
The Fifth Generation
Pamela McCorduck and Edward Feigenbaum
“her books include machines who think in 1979 the fifth generation in 1983 with Edie Feigenbaum”— Lex Fridman
The Edge of Chaos
Pamela McCorduck
“you've written the novel edge of chaos but it's inspired by the ideas of complexity”— Lex Fridman
The Futures of Women
Pamela McCorduck and Nancy Ramsey
“you and Nancy Ramsay talk about four possible futures right of women in science and tech”— Lex Fridman
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Computers and Thought
Edward Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman
“I had worked on a book edited by Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman called computers and thought it was the first textbook of readings of AI”— guest
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
“it's the Frankenstein idea yes the annotated Frankenstein on my coffee table is this tremendous novel it really is just beautifully perceptive”— guest
The Iliad
Homer
“if you read Homer Homer has robots in the Iliad and a classical scholar was pointing out to me”— guest
The Odyssey
Homer
“you just read The Odyssey The Odyssey is full of robots it is I said yeah how do you think Odysseus's ship gets from place”— guest
Bang the Drum Slowly
Mark Harris
“mark was most famous then for a novel called bang the drum slowly which was about baseball”— guest
Big reveals from this episode
- After being rejected by NSF, DARPA and others, McCorduck finally funded Machines Who Think with a private grant from Ed Fredkin of MIT, who liked 'crackpot ideas.'
- She argues robots appear far earlier than the Golem, citing Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, where Odysseus's ship is essentially crewed by magic robots.
- McCorduck rejects the AI winter as a 'crock,' arguing winters are a commerce phenomenon while science continues almost regardless of funding.
- She reframes existential-threat AI fears from Musk, Hawking and others as 'the male gaze', men threatened that something might be smarter than them.
- She reveals she subconsciously wanted AI to succeed to disprove the notion that intelligence resides inside the male cranium.
- She describes inventing the 'geriatric robot' as a joke for students, which critics in the New York Review of Books used to condemn AI people as inhuman.
Worth remembering
- McCorduck was a published novelist before she decided to write a history of AI rather than a novel about the field.
- The four founding fathers she names are Allen Newell, Herbert Simon, Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy, all at the 1956 Dartmouth conference.
- Before Machines Who Think she worked on Computers and Thought, the first textbook of readings in AI, edited by Feigenbaum and Feldman.
- In 1974 a report on computer science nearly left out AI entirely; AI was only included because Don Knuth insisted it was important.
- Herbert Simon would stop by her house for sherry and they'd talk for hours about literature, music and art, Simon read Proust twice in the original French.
- She frames the AI winter as the difference between science and commerce, citing Britain's Lighthill report as science killed by funding politics.
- At the early Santa Fe Institute everyone kept their doors open; Murray Gell-Mann helped her see Harold Cohen's painting program AARON as a complex adaptive system.
- She is not a fan of Kurzweil's singularity, arguing machines have already been smarter than humans in some ways since adding machines were invented.