
Elektro the Moto-Man Had the Biggest Brain at the 1939 World’s Fair - sohkamyung
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/dawn-of-electronics/elektro-the-motoman-had-the-biggest-brain-at-the-1939-worlds-fair
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sevensor
It's pretty mind-bending to think about the technological development of the
United States this robot came into. On the one hand, seemingly limitless
progress -- electric light, airplanes, radio, talking motion pictures, nuclear
fission and rocketry just over the horizon -- and on the other, rural areas
that would be lit by kerosene for another quarter century.

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gattilorenz
[(partially) tongue-in-cheek]

After working in AI research for about 10 years, I suspect that most of what
you see (especially outside "scientific" literature) is... very sophisticated
smoke and mirrors.

After reading this and seeing the (impressive!) video, I'm starting to think
it was smoke and mirrors and hype since the beginning, and even earlier than
that.

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nkoren
Yeah, the way that voice commands were recognized via pattern-matching the
syllabic rhythms rather than via the actual meaning of the commands was, in
hindsight, kind of cheating.

But consider the degree to which today's neural nets are simply engaging in
(admittedly far more complex) pattern-matching, with little more understanding
of the actual _meaning_ than Elektro.

A lot of today's AI researchers/enthusiasts/hypesters like to imagine that
there isn't really anything fundamental missing from this picture, that it's
just a matter of the pattern-matching getting _better_ until it really becomes
useable in a general-purpose sort of way. But I'm sure that Elektro's makers
could have told themselves the same thing. "Look at how sophisticated Elektro
is, with 48 electrical relays! Imagine what it will be able to do with
hundreds of relays! Or thousands! The possibilities are virtually limitless!"

~~~
perl4ever
Yes, but false hopes keep people going. And these days, your garden variety
automaton has billions of tiny switches. There is a well-known saying that
"quantity has a quality all its own".

My uninformed opinion is that there is probably some crucial learning
mechanism missing from current AI but I suspect the raw power of current
electronics is completely sufficient. Perhaps we just need a way to couple one
module to another to automate training in some way we haven't invented yet but
will seem obvious when we do.

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trhway
>By the early 1920s, the company had succeeded in developing fully automatic
electrical substations, and its engineers were looking for ways to improve
them. One operator requested a way to call the substation system remotely and
initiate a change in the normal operating routine. Thus was born Televox, a
set of control units that started Westinghouse down the path to developing
robots.

>Roy J. Wensley designed Televox to change switches in a substation in
response to sounds it detected.

Alexa, change the power mode on the transformer #1.

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olivermarks
[https://youtu.be/sdLEQNmsXag](https://youtu.be/sdLEQNmsXag)

[https://youtu.be/Q6TQEoDS-fQ?t=33m47s](https://youtu.be/Q6TQEoDS-fQ?t=33m47s)

I would love to have a replica of this in my office

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SpikeDad
"Hey Mommy. Elktro is smoking, can I?". "Sure Billy what brand would you
like?".

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wumms
OT: bring Futurama back :) (There was a pavillon on that World's Fair, which
named the show.)

