Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

If you're interested in how Turing developed the ideas in this paper, I can fully recommend the Turing biography by Andrew Hodges. I'm halfway though it now. It's an interesting read, as apart from Turning's life, it tries to reconstruct the relationships that he had with fellow researchers, the environment in which he was working and the development of his thinking.



Hodges biography of Turing is a monumental piece of work, covering Turings private and family life, his time as a codebreaker, later work in Manchester attempting to build the first real computer, and lesser discussed work such as his voice encrypting transatlantic telephone and his study of morphogenesis.

You not only get the story of these events, but the work is detailed at such a level as to satisfy an academic.So

if, for example, you've heard the Enigma code breaking story but really wanted to hear the step by step process from transmission to plain text, this book's for you.

The current edition is branded like the Film, but don't let that put you off.


I'll def check that out :). I'm just in the beginning of my first AI course and got this article recommended by the prof. Really enjoyed it.


Haha, this is arguably the article in AI.

Other landmark events in the field include the Dartmouth Conference, when John McCarthy named the field "Artificial Intelligence", defined the goals, and set out to achieve them, unfortunately it's not easy to point to a single paper on the subject, though do read the conference proposal, posted on HN recently [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12080269 ]; then you have the Lighthill report where the UK Government essentially lost interest in the project, the conclusions are debatable, but clearly and entertainingly argued, a video of the presentation of the report, with McCarthy present and responding, is available online also [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yReDbeY7ZMU&list=PLhThm05V6b...].

Finally I'd cite the 1970s era book What Computers Can't Do, and its 90s reprint, What Computers Still Can't Do as all you need to know about the current state of AI, its ultimate aims and the fatal flaws in its fundamental assumptions. The fact that it was written in the 70s and applies to today's discussions on AI should be enough to indicate its prescience.

Modern AI ignores or is unaware of many of the critiques that have gone before, only time will tell if they will soon hit the same historical obstacles.

The points I've mentioned here don't really cover the history and development of Neural Networks, but they went through a similar process of discovery, critique, near-dormant research, and finally a return to popularity, but with neglect of the critiques rather than addressing them.

Welcome to the field!




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: