Thu October 27, 2011 Intelligent Design: McCarthy, Myself And
A.I. Adam Frank is an astrophysicist at the University of
Rochester. He is a regular contributor to the NPR blog, 13.7:
Cosmos and Culture. What is going to happen when our machines
wake up? What will happen when all these computers which run our
lives suddenly become intelligent and self-aware. It's a
question which makes sense to today as the world marks the
recent passage of John McCarthy. McCarthy was an emeritus
professor at Stanford who was known for pushing the boundaries
of what was possible with computers. He developed the venerable
computer programming language called Lisp, using it develop one
of the first computer chess programs. He also helped spur the
growth of the internet through his early time-sharing
technologies (these were like an early version of cloud
computing). But it is for AI that he will be remembered.
Artificial Intelligence has become such standard part of culture
that I can refer to it by its initials, AI, and you know