We have long been obsessed with the dream of creating intelligent machines. This vision can be traced back to Greek civilization, and the notion that mortals somehow can create…
Abstract
We have long been obsessed with the dream of creating intelligent machines. This vision can be traced back to Greek civilization, and the notion that mortals somehow can create machines that think has persisted throughout history. Until this decade these illusions have borne no substance. The birth of the computer in the 1940s did cause a resurgence of the cybernaut idea, but the computer's role was primarily one of number‐crunching and realists soon came to respect the enormous difficulties in crafting machines that could accomplish even the simplest of human tasks.