Building the Second Mind: 1956 and the Origins of Artificial Intelligence Computing

Building the Second Mind: 1956 and the Origins of Artificial Intelligence Computing is a history of the origins of AI. AI, the field that seeks to do things that would be considered intelligent if a human being did them, was developed as a general concept over centuries- it is a constant of human thought. Various efforts to carry this out appear- in the forms of robotic machinery and more abstract tools and systems of symbols intended to artificially contrive knowledge. The latter sounds like alchemy, and it certainly is. There is no gold more precious than knowledge. That this is a constant historical dream, deeply rooted in the human experience, is not in doubt. However, it has been nothing more than a dream until the machinery that could put it into effect was not only extant but relatively cheap, robust, and available for ongoing experimentation.

Once the digital computer was invented during the years leading to and including the Second World War, AI became a tangible possibility. Software could be designed and executed that used symbols to enact the protocols of problem-solving. However, envisioning our possibilities when they are in front of us is often a bigger challenge than their material reality. AI in the general sense of intelligence cultivated through computing had also been discussed with increasing confidence through the early 1950s. At the same time, as we will see, bringing into reality as a concept took repeated hints and fits and starts until it finally appeared with its own name in 1956.