Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
Pamela Romo quartic she's an author who
is written on the history and the
philosophical significance of artificial
intelligence her books include machines
who think in 1979 the fifth generation
in 1983 with Edie foggy and mom who's
considered to be the father of expert
systems the edge of chaos the features
of women and many more books I came
across her work in an unusual way by
stumbling in a quote for machines who
think that is something like artificial
intelligence began with the ancient wish
to forged the gods that was a beautiful
way to draw connecting line between our
societal relationship with AI from the
grounded day to day science math and
engineering to popular stories and
science fiction and myths of automatons
that go back for centuries through her
literary work she has spent a lot of
time with the seminal figures of
artificial intelligence including the
founding fathers of AI from the 1956
Dartmouth summer workshop where the
field was launched I reached out to
Pamela for conversation in hopes of
getting a sense what those early days
were like and how their dreams continue
to reverberate for the work of our
community today I often don't know where
the conversation may take us but I jump
in and see having no constraints rules
or goals is a wonderful way to discover
new ideas this is the artificial
intelligence podcast if you enjoy it
subscribe on YouTube give it five stars
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friedman spelled fri d ma n and now
here's my conversation with Pamela
McCourt ik
in 1979 yearbook machines who think was
published in it you interview some of
the early AI pioneers and explore the
idea that they I was born not out of
maybe math and computer science but out
of myth and legend so tell me if you
could the story of how you first arrived
at the book the journey of beginning to
write it I had been a novelist I'd
published two novels and I was sitting
under the portal at Stanford one day in
the house we were renting for the summer
and I thought I should write a novel
about these weird people in AI I know
and then I thought II don't write a
novel write a history simple just go
around you know interview them splice it
together voila instant book hahaha it
was much harder than that but nobody
else was doing it and so I thought no
this is a great opportunity and there
were people who John McCarthy for
example thought it was a nutty idea
there were much you know the field had
not evolved yet so on and he had some
mathematical thing he thought I should
write instead and I said no John I am
NOT a woman in search of a project I'm
this is what I want to do I hope you'll
cooperate and he said Oh mutter mutter
well okay it's your your time it was the
pitch for the I mean such a young field
at that point how do you write a
personal history of a field that's so
young I said this is wonderful the
founders of the field are alive and
kicking and able to talk about what
they're doing did they sound or feel
like founders at the time that they know
that they've been found
they have founded some oh yeah they knew
what they were doing was very important
very what they what I now see in
retrospect is that they were at the
height of their research careers and
it's humbling to me
they took time out from all the things
that they had to do as a consequence of
being there and it's a talk to this
woman who said I think I'm gonna write a
book oh you know it was amazing just
amazing so who stands out to you may be
looking 63 years ago the Dartmouth
conference the so Marvin Minsky was
there McCarthy was there Claude Shannon
Allen you'll herb Simon some of the
folks you've mentioned right then
there's the other characters right
the would one of your co-authors yeah he
wasn't at Dartmouth he was not Dharma no
but I mean he was there I think it
undergraduate then and and of course Joe
draw I mean though all of these are
players I'm not a Dartmouth them but in
that era right it's seem you and so on
so who are the characters if you could
paint a picture that stand out to you or
memory those people you've interviewed
and maybe not people that were just in
the India the atmosphere in the
atmosphere uh of course the four
founding fathers were extraordinary guys
they really were
who are the founding fathers Allen
Newell Herbert Simon Marvin Minsky John
McCarthy they were the four who were not
only at the Dartmouth conference but
Newland Simon arrived there with a
working program called the logic
theorist everybody else had great ideas
about how they might do it but they
weren't going to do it yet and you
mentioned Joe trout my husband I I was
immersed in AI before I met Joe because
I had been EDI Gonzalez assistant at
Stanford and before that I had worked on
a book by edited by Feigenbaum and
Julian Feldman called a computers and
thought it was the first textbook of
readings of AI and they they only did it
because they were trying to teach AI to
people at Berkeley and there was nothing
you know you'd have to send him to this
journal in that Journal this was not the
Internet where you could go look at
an article so I was fascinated from the
get-go by AI I was an English major yeah
what did I know and yet I was fascinated
and that's why you saw that historical
but that literary background which i
think is very much a part of the
continuum of AI that the AI grew out of
that same impulse is that yeah that
traditional what what was wood Ritu ai
how did you even think of it back back
then what what was the possibilities the
dreams I was interesting to you the idea
of intelligence outside the human
cranium this was a phenomenal idea and
even when I finished machines who think
I didn't know if they were gonna succeed
I in fact the final chapter is very
wishy-washy frankly I'll succeed the
fieldid yeah
yes it was there the idea that a AI
began with the wish to forge the God so
the the spiritual component that we
crave to create this other thing greater
than ourselves for those guys I don't
think so Newell and Simon were cognitive
psychologists what they wanted was to
simulate aspects of human intelligence
and they found they could do it on the
computer
Minsky just thought it was a really cool
thing to do likewise McCarthy McCarthy
'add got the idea in 1949 when when he
was a Caltech student and he listened to
somebody's lecture it's it's in my book
I forget who it was and he thought oh
that would be fun to do how do we do
that and he took a very mathematical
approach Minsky was hybrid and Nuland
Simon were very much cognitive
psychology how can we simulate various
things about cockney
about human cognition what happened over
the many years is of course our
definition of intelligence expanded
tremendously I mean these days
biologists are comfortable talking about
the intelligence of cell the
intelligence of the brain they not just
human brain but the intelligence of any
kind of brain cephalopods I mean an
octopus is really intelligent by any
amount we wouldn't have thought of that
in the 60s even the 70s so all these
things have worked in and I did hear one
behavioural primatologist Fran's Duvall
say AI taught us the questions to ask
yeah this is what happens right it's
when you try to build it is when you
start to actually ask questions if it
puts a mirror to ourselves
yeah right so you were there in the
medical it seems like not many people
were asking the questions that you were
the trees tried trying to look at this
field the way you were I was so low I
when I went to get funding for this
because I needed somebody to transcribe
the interviews and I needed travel
expenses I went to every thing you could
think of the NSF the DARPA there was an
Air Force place that doled out money and
each of them said well that was that was
very interesting that's a very
interesting idea but we'll think about
it
and the National Science Foundation
actually said to be in plain English hey
you're only a writer you're not at
historian of science and I said yeah
that's true but you know the historians
of science will be crawling all over
this field I'm writing for the general
audience so I felt and they still
wouldn't budge I finally got a private
grant without knowing who it was
from IDI fredkin and MIT yeah he was a
wealthy man and he liked what he called
crackpot ideas and he considered this a
crackpot is a crackpot idea and he was
willing to support it I am ever grateful
let me say that you know some would say
that a history of science approach to AI
or even just a history or anything like
the book that you've written hasn't been
written since by me I don't
maybe I'm not familiar but it's
certainly not many if we think about
bigger than just these couple of decades
few decades what what are the roots of
AI oh they go back so far yes of course
there's all the legendary stuff The
Golem and the early robots of the 20th
century but they go back much further
than that if you read Homer Homer has
robots in the Iliad and a classical
scholar was pointing out to me just a
few months ago well you said you just
read The Odyssey The Odyssey is full of
robots it is I said yeah how do you
think Odysseus is ship gets from place
one place to another
he doesn't have two crew people to do
that the crew man yeah it's it's magic
it's robots whoa I thought how
interesting so we've had this notion of
AI for a long time and then toward the
end of the 19th century the beginning of
the 20th century there were scientists
who actually tried to make this happen
some way or another not successfully
they didn't have the technology for it
and of course Babbage in the 1850s and
60s he saw that what he was building was
capable of intelligent behavior and he
when he ran out of funding the British
government finally said that's enough
he and lady Lovelace decided oh well why
don't we make you know why don't we play
the ponies with this he had other ideas
for raising money too
but if we actually reach back once again
I think people don't actually really
know that robots do appear an ideas of
robots you talk about the Hellenic and
the Bragg points of view oh yes can you
tell me about each I defined it this way
the Hellenic point of view is robots are
great you know they are party help they
help this guy have Festus does God have
Festus in his Forge I presume he made
them to help him and so on and so forth
and and they they welcome the whole idea
of robots the break view has to do with
I think it's the second commandment thou
shalt not make any graven image in other
words you better not start imitating
humans because that's just forbidden
it's the second commandment and a lot of
the reaction to artificial intelligence
has been a sense that this is this is
somehow wicked this is somehow
blasphemous we shouldn't be going there
now you can say yeah but there gonna be
some downsides and I say yes there are
but blasphemy is not one of them you
know there's a kind of fear that feels
to be almost primal there's their
religious roots to that because so much
of our society has religious roots and
so there is a feeling of like you said
blasphemy though of creating the other
of creating something you know it
doesn't have to be artificial
intelligence it's creating life in
general mm-hmm it's the Frankenstein
idea yes the annotator Frankenstein on
my coffee table is this tremendous novel
it really is just beautifully perceptive
yes we we do fear this and we have good
reason to fear it but because it can get
out of hand maybe you can speak to that
fear the psychology if you've thought
about it you know there's a practical
sort of
fears concerns in the short term you can
think of if we actually think about
artificial intelligence systems you can
think about bias of discrimination in
algorithms so you you can think about
their social networks have algorithms
that recommend the content you see there
by these algorithms control the behavior
of the masses there are these concerns
but it to me it feels like the fear that
people have is deeper than that
so have you thought about the psychology
of it I think in a superficial way I
have there is this notion that if we
produce a machine that can think it will
out thank us and therefore replace us I
guess that's a that's a primal fear yes
I almost look almost kind of a kind of
mortality so around the time you said
you work with it Stanford with Edie
phagon bomb mm-hmm so let's look at that
one person throughout this history
clearly key person one of the many in
the history of AI how has he changed in
general around him how the Stanford
changed in the last how many years I
were talking about here no since that
key 65 665 so I mean it does have to be
about him I could be bigger but because
usually key person an expert systems for
example how is that how would these
folks who've you've interviewed in the
Samedi 79 changed through the decades
in Ed's case I know I know him well we
are dear friends we see each other every
month or so he told me that when
machines who think first came out he
really thought all the front matter was
kind of baloney and ten years later he
said no I see what you're getting at
yes this is an impulse that has been
this has been a human impulse for
thousands of years to create something
outside the human cranium that has
intelligence I think it's very hard when
you're down at the algorithmic level and
you're just trying to make something
work which is hard enough just step back
and think of the big picture it reminds
me of when I was in Santa Fe I knew a
lot of archaeologists and which was a
hobby of mine and I would say yeah yeah
well you can look at the shards and say
oh this came from this tribe and this
came from this trade route and so on but
what about the big picture and a very
distinguished archeologist said to me
they don't think that way you do know
they're trying to match the shard to the
to where it came from
that's you know where did this corn the
remainder of this corn come from was it
grown here was it grown elsewhere and I
think this is part of the AI any
scientific field you're so busy doing
the the hard work and it is hard work
that you don't step I can say oh well
now let's talk about that you know the
general meaning of all yes so none of
the even Minsky and McCarthy they oh
those guys did yeah the founding fathers
did early on or pretty early on what
they had but in a different way from how
I looked at it the two cognitive
psychologists Newell and Simon they
wanted to imagine
and reforming cognitive psychology so
that we would really really understand
the brain
Minsky was more speculative and John
McCarthy saw it as I think I'm doing
doing him right by this he really saw it
as a great boon for human beings to have
this technology and that was reason
enough to do it and he had wonderful
wonderful fables
about how if you do the mathematics you
will see that these things are really
good for human beings and if you had a
technological objection he had an answer
a technological answer but here's how we
could get over that and then bla bla bla
bla and one of his favorite things was
what he called the literary problem
which of course he presented to me
several times that is everything in
literature there are conventions in
literature one of the conventions is
that you have a villain and a hero and
the hero in most literature is human and
the villain in most literature is a
machine and he said that's just not the
way it's gonna be but that's the way
we're used to it so when we tell stories
about AI
it's always with this paradigm I thought
yeah he's right you know looking back in
the classics are you are is certainly
the machines trying to overthrow of the
humans Frankenstein is different
Frankenstein is a creature you never he
never has a name Frankenstein of course
is the guy who created him the human dr.
Frankenstein this creature wants to be
loved
wants to be accepted and it is only when
Frankenstein turns his head in fact runs
the other way
and the creature is without love that he
becomes the monster that he later
becomes so who's the villain in
Frankenstein it's unclear right oh it is
unclear yeah it's really the people who
drive him but driving him away right
they bring out the worst that's right
they gave him no human solace and he is
driven away you're right
he becomes at one point a friend of a
blind man and they he serves this blind
man and they become great very friendly
but it when the sighted people of the
blind man's family come it ah you've got
a monster here so it's it's very
didactic in its way and what I didn't
know is that Mary Shelley and Percy
Shelley were great readers of the
literature surrounding abolition in the
United States the abolition of slavery
and they picked that up wholesale you
know you are making monsters of these
people because you won't give them the
respect and love that they deserve do
you have if we get philosophical for a
second do you worry that once we create
machines that are a little bit more
intelligent let's look at Roomba that
vacuum is the cleaner that that this
darker part of human nature where we
abuse the other the the somebody who's
different will come out I don't worry
about it I could imagine it happening
but I think that what AI has to offer
the human race will be so attractive
that yeah people will be won over so you
have looked deep into these people have
deep conversations and it's yeah
interesting to get a sense of stories of
the way they were thinking the way it
was changed
your own thinking about AI has changed
see master McCarthy is uh what about the
years at CMU Carnegie Mellon with Joe
and was sure a Joe was not in AI he was
in algorithmic complexity was there
always a line between AI and computer
science for example is AI its own place
of outcasts it was at the feeling there
was a kind of outcasts period for AI for
instance in 1974 the new field was
hardly ten years old the new field of
computer science was asked by the net
National Science Foundation I believe
but it may have been the National
Academies I can't remember to you know
tell us tell our your fellow scientists
where computer science is and what it
means and they wanted to leave out AI
and they only agreed to put it in
because Don Knuth said hey this is
important you can't just leave that out
really Don Don Knuth yes I talked to
mrs. Nisa out of all the people yes but
you see yeah an AI person couldn't have
made that argument he wouldn't have been
believed but Knuth was believed yes so
George I worked on the real stuff a Joe
was working on algorithmic complexity
but he would say in plain English again
and again the smartest people I know are
in AI really oh yes no question anyway
Joe love these guys what happened was
that I guess it was as I started to
write machines who think herb Simon and
I became very close friends he would
walk past our house on Northumberland
Street every day after work and I would
just be putting my cover on my
typewriter and I would lean out the door
and say herb would you like a sherry and
her
almost always would like a sherry so
he'd stop in and we talked for an hour
two hours my journal says we talked this
afternoon for three hours what was in
his mind at the time if in terms of an
AI side of things oh we didn't talk too
much about AI we talked about other
things life we both loved literature and
herb had read Proust in the original
French twice all the way through
I can't I'm read in English in
translation so we talked about
literature we talked about languages we
talked about music because he loved
music we talked about art cuz he was he
was actually enough of a painter that he
had to give it up because he was afraid
it was interfering with his research and
so on so no it was really just Chat Chat
but it was very warm so one summer I
said to her you know well my students
have all the really interesting
conversations I was teaching at the
University of Pittsburgh then in the
English department you know they get to
talk about the meaning of life and that
kind of thing and what do I have I have
university meetings where we talk about
the photocopying budget and you know
whether the course on romantic poetry
should be one semester or two so herb
laughed he said yes I know what you mean
he said but you know you you could do
something about that dot I was his wife
dot and I used to have a salon at the
University of Chicago every Sunday night
and we would have essentially an open
house and people knew it wasn't for sure
a small talk it was really for some
topic of depth he said but my advice
would be that you choose the topic ahead
of time fine I said so the following we
exchanged mail over the summer that was
us post in those days because you didn't
have personal email right and we I
decided I would
organize it and there would be eight of
us Alan Noll and his wife herb Simon and
his wife Dorothea there was a novelist
in town a man named Mark Harris he had
just just arrived and his wife Josephine
mark was most famous then for a novel
called bang the drum solo slowly which
was about baseball and Joe and me so
eight people and we met monthly and we
we just sank our teeth into really hard
topics and it was great fun how have
your own views around artificial
intelligence changed in through the
process of writing machines who think
and afterwards the ripple effects I was
a little skeptical that this whole thing
would work out it didn't matter to me it
was so audacious the whole thing being a
IAI general yeah and in some ways it
hasn't worked out the way I expected so
far that is to say there's this
wonderful lot of apps thanks to deep
learning and so on but those are
algorithmic yeah and in the part of
symbolic processing there is very little
yet yes and that's the feel that lies
waiting for industrious and industrious
graduate students maybe you can tell me
some figures they popped up in your life
in the 80s with expert systems where
there was the symbolic AI possibilities
of what's you know that what most people
think of as AI if you dream of the
possibilities AI is really expert system
and those hit a few walls and those
challenges there and I think yes they
will reemerge again with some new
breakthroughs and so on but what did
that feel like
both the possibility and the winter that
followed
slow down ah you know this whole thing
about AI winter is to me a crock snow
winters because I look at the basic
research that was being done in the 80s
which is supposed to be my god it was
really important it was laying down
things that nobody had thought about
before but it was basic research
you couldn't monetize it hence the
winter yeah you know research scientific
research goes in fits and starts it
isn't this nice smooth Oh this follows
this follows this no oh you know it just
doesn't work that way there's an
interesting thing the way winters happen
it's never the fault of the researchers
it's the it's the the some source of
hype over promising well no let me take
that back sometimes it is the fault of
the researchers sometimes certain
researchers might over-promised the
possibilities they themselves believe
that we're just a few years away sort of
just recently talked to you on musk and
he believes he'll have an autonomous
Veeck will have autonomous vehicles in a
year I and he believes it a year a year
yeah would have mass deployment one time
for the record this is too fast on 19
right now
yes he's talking 2020 to do the
impossible you really have to believe it
and I think what's going to happen when
you believe it cuz there's a lot of
really brilliant people around him is
some good stuff will come out of it some
unexpected brilliant breakthroughs will
come out of it when you really believe
it when you work that hard I believe
that I believe autonomous vehicles will
come I just don't believe that it'll be
in a year yeah I wish but nevertheless
there's I found vehicles is a good
example there's a feeling many companies
have promised by 2021 by 2022 for GM I
basically every single automotive
companies promise they'll have
autonomous vehicles so that kind of over
the promise is what leads to the winter
because it will come to those dates
there won't be autonomous vehicles and
they'll be a feeling well wait a minute
if we took your word at that time that
means
we just spent billions of dollars had
made no money and there's a counter
response to where everybody gives up on
it sort of intellectually and at every
level the hope just dies and all that's
left is a few basic researchers so
you're uncomfortable with some aspects
of this this idea well it's the
difference between science and commerce
so you think science prevail science
goes on the way does oh it was science
can really be killed by not getting
proper funding or timely funding I think
Great Britain was a perfect example of
that
the Whitehill report in remembers a year
essentially said there's no use of great
britain putting that any money into this
it's it's going nowhere and this was all
about social factions in Great Britain
ed Murrow hated Cambridge and Cambridge
hated Manchester and yep somebody else
can write that story but it really did
have a heart effect on research there
now they've come roaring back with deep
mind yeah but that's one guy and his
visionaries around him but just to push
on that it's kind of interesting you
have this dislike of the idea of an AI
winter the words that where's that
coming from where were you oh because I
just don't think it's true uh there was
a particular periods of time this
romantic notion certainly yeah no I
I admire science perhaps more than I
admire commerce Commerce is fine
hey you know we all got to live but
science has a much longer view than
Commerce and
continues almost regardless not it can't
continue totally regardless but it
almost regardless of what saleable and
what's not what's monetizable and what's
not so the winter is just something that
happens on the Commerce side and the
science so it seemed arches
that's a beautifully optimistic
inspiring message I agree with you I
think if we look at the key people that
work in AI their work in key scientists
most disciplines they continue working
out of the love for science no matter
the you can always scrape up some
funding to stay alive and they continue
working diligently but there certainly
is a huge amount of funding now and
there's a concern on the AI side and
deep learning there's a concern that we
might with over-promising hit another
slowdown and funding which does affect
the number of students you know that
kind of thing yeah it no it does so the
kind of ideas you had two machines who
think did you continue that curiosity
throw through the decades that followed
yes I did and what what was your view
historical view of how AI community
evolved the conversations about it the
work as it persisted the same way from
its birth no of course not like it's
just as we were just talking
the symbolic AI really kind of dried up
and it all became algorithmic I remember
a young AI student telling me what he
was doing and I had been away from the
field long enough I'd gotten involved
with complexity of the Santa Fe
Institute
I thought algorithms yeah you there in
the surface of but they're not the main
event
no they became the main event that
surprised me and we all know the
downside of this we all know that if
you're using an algorithm to make
decisions based on
a gazillion human decisions baked into
it are all the mistakes that humans make
the bigger trees the shortsightedness
and so on and so on
so you mentioned santa fe institute i
usually you've written the novel edge of
chaos but it's inspired by the ideas of
complexity where a lot of which have
been extensively explored at the Santa
Fe Institute right it's a I mean it's
another fascinating topic just sort of
emergent complexity from chaos nobody
knows how it happens really it seems to
where all the interesting stuff happened
so how the first knotty novel but just
complexity in general in the work of
Santa Fe fit into the bigger puzzle of
the history of AI or maybe even your
personal journey through that one of the
last projects I did
concerning AI in particular was looking
at the work of Harold Cohen the painter
and Harold was deeply involved with AI
he was a painter first and and what his
project Aaron which was a lifelong
project did was reflect his own
cognitive processes okay Harold and I
even though I wrote a book about it we
had a lot of friction between us and I
went I thought this is it you know the
book died it was published didn't fell
into a ditch this is it I'm finished
it's time for me to do something
different by chance this was a
sabbatical year for my husband and we
spent two months at the Santa Fe
Institute in two months at Caltech and
then the spring semester in Munich
Germany
okay those
two months at the Santa Fe Institute
were so restorative for me and I began
to it this the Institute was very small
then it was in some kind of office
complex on old Santa Fe Trail everybody
kept their door open so you could crack
your head on a problem and if you
finally didn't get it you could walk in
to see Stewart Coffman or you know any
number of people and say I don't get
this can you explain and one of the
people that I was talking to about
complex adaptive systems was Murray
Gelman and I told Murray what Harold
Cohen had done and I said you know this
sounds to me like a complex adaptive
system
he said yeah it is well what do you know
Harold's Erin had all these kissing
cousins all over the world in science
and in economics and so on and so forth
I was so relieved I thought okay your
instincts are okay you're doing the
right thing I didn't have the vocabulary
and that was one of the things that the
Santa Fe Institute gave me if I could
have rewritten that book no it had just
come out I couldn't rewrite it I would
have had a vocabulary to explain what
Erin was doing okay so I got really
interested in what was going on at the
Institute and that people were again
bright and funny and willing to explain
anything to this amateur
George Cowan who was then the head of
the Institute said he thought it might
be a nice idea if I wrote a book about
the Institute and I thought about it and
I I had my eye on some other project god
knows what and I said I'm sorry George
yeah I really love to do it but you know
just not gonna work for me at this
moment I said all too bad I think it
would make an interesting book well he
was right and I was wrong I wish I'd
done it but that's interesting I hadn't
thought about that that that was a road
not taken' that I wish I'd taken well
you know or this just on that on that
point it's quite brave for you as an as
a writer as a sort of coming from a
world of literature and the literary
thinking historical thing I mean just
from that world and bravely talking to
quite I assume large egos and in fact in
uh AI or in complexity and so on how did
you do it like where did you I mean I
suppose they could be intimidated of you
as well this is two different worlds I I
never picked up that anybody was
intimidated by me how are you brave
enough where did you find the guts it's
not just dumb dumb luck I mean I this is
an interesting Rock to turn over I'm
gonna write a book about and you know
people have enough patience with writers
if they think they're gonna end up at a
book that they let you flail around and
so on as well but they also look if the
writer has there's like if there's a
sparkle in their eye if they get it yeah
sure right when were you at the Santa Fe
Institute uh the time I'm talking about
is 1990 yeah 1990 1901 92 but we then
because Joe is an external faculty
member we're in Santa Fe every summer we
bought a house there and I didn't have
that much to do with the Institute
anymore I was writing my novels I was
doing whatever I was doing
but I loved the Institute and I loved
they again the audacity of the ideas
that really appeals to me I think that
there there's this feeling much like in
great great Institutes of neuroscience
for example that it's there they're in
it for the long game of understanding
something fundamental about reality in
nature and that's really exciting so if
we start to not to look a little bit
more recently how you know AI is really
popular today how is this world
you mentioned the algorithmic but in
general is the spirit of the people the
kind of conversations you hear through
the grapevine and so on is that
different than the roots that you
remember no the same kind of excitement
the same kind of this is really gonna
make a difference in the world and it
will it has you know a lot of folks
especially young you know 20 years old
or something they think we've just found
something special here we're going to
change the world tomorrow on a timescale
do you have a sense of what of the time
scale at which breakthroughs in AI
haven't I really don't because look at
deep learning if that was a Geoffrey
Hinton came up with the algorithm in 86
but it took all these years for the
technology to be good enough to actually
be be applicable so no I can't predict
that at all
I can't I wouldn't even try well let me
ask you to not to try to predict but to
speak to the you know I'm sure in the
60s as it continues now there's people
that think let's call it we can call it
this
fun word the singularity mmm when there
is a phase shift there's some profound
feeling where we're all really surprised
by what's able to be achieved I'm sure
those dreams were there I remember
reading quotes in the 60s and those 15
you how have your own views maybe if you
look back about the timeline of a
singularity changed well I'm not a big
fan of the singularity as Ray Kurzweil
has presented it how would you define
the Ray Kurzweil sort of a holiday well
how do you think of singularity in the
skin if I understand Kurt's Wiles view
it's sort of there's going to be this
moment when machines are smarter than
humans and you know game game over
however the game over is I mean do they
put us on a reservation do they etc etc
and first of all machines are smarter
than humans in some ways all over the
place and they have been since adding
machines were invented so it's not it's
not gonna come like some great eatable
crossroads you know where they meet each
other and our offspring Oedipus says
your dad yeah it's just not gonna happen
yes oh it's already game over with
calculators right they're already out to
do much better basic arithmetic than us
but you know there's a human-like
intelligence and it's not the ones that
destroy us but you know somebody that
you can have as a as a friend oh you can
have deep connections with that kind of
passing the Turing test and beyond those
kinds of ideas have you dreamt of those
oh yes yes yeah it was possible in a
book I wrote with that Feigenbaum
there's a little story called the
geriatric robot and how I came up with
the geriatric robot is a story in itself
but here's here's what the Gerry
robot does it doesn't just clean you up
and feed you and we'll you out into the
Sun it's great advantages it listens it
says tell me again about the great coup
of 73 tell me again about how awful or
how wonderful your grandchildren are and
so on and so forth
and it isn't hanging around to inherit
your money it isn't hanging around
because it can't get any other job this
is its job and so on and so forth well I
would love something like that oh yeah I
mean for me that deeply excites me so I
think there's a lot of us like she got a
no it was a joke I dreamed it up because
I needed to talk to college students and
I needed to give them some idea of what
AI might be and they were rolling in the
aisles as I elaborated and elaborated
and elaborated when it went into the
book they took my hide off in the New
York Review of Books this is just what
we have thought about these people in AI
they're inhuman come on get over it
don't you think that's a good thing for
the world that AI could potentially walk
I do absolutely and furthermore I want
you know I'm pushing 80 now by the time
I need help like that I also want it to
roll itself in a corner and shut the
up let me let me linger on that
point do you really though yeah I do
here's what you wanted to push back a
little bit a little but I have watched
my friends go through the whole issue
around having help in the house and some
of them have been very lucky and they
had fabulous help and some of them have
had people in the house who want to keep
the television going on all day
Oh so want to talk on their phones all
day No so basically just
yourself in the corner unfortunately as
humans when were assistants we we care
we're still even when we're assisting
others we care about ourselves more of
course and so you create more
frustration and in robot AI assistant
can really optimize the experience of
you I was just speaking to the point you
actually bring up a very very good point
but I was speaking to the fact that as
humans they're a little complicated that
we don't necessarily want a perfect
servant
I don't maybe you disagree with that but
there's um I think there's a push and
pull with humans mm-hmm a little tension
a little mystery that of course that's
really difficult failure to get right
but I do sense especially in today with
social media the people are getting more
and more lonely even young folks and
sometimes especially young folks that
loneliness there's a longing for
connection and AI can help alleviate
some of that loneliness some just
somebody who listens like in person that
so we speak sodus so so so to speak yeah
so to speak yeah that to me is really
exciting but so if we look at that that
level of intelligence is exceptionally
difficult to achieve actually as the
singularity or whatever that's the human
level bar that people have dreamt of
that to touring dreamt of it he had a
date time line do you have how of your
own timeline evolved on past don't I
don't even think about it you don't even
know just this field has been so full of
surprises for me you just take him in
and see yeah it's I just can't
maybe that's because I've been around
the field long enough to think you know
don't don't go that way
herps
was terrible about making these
predictions of when this and that would
happen and he was a sensible guy yeah
his quotes are often used right as a
legend yeah yeah do you have concerns
about AI the existential threats that
many people like um Oscars and some
Harris and others oh yeah yeah that
takes up a half a chapter in my book I
called it the male gaze well you hang
out the male gaze is actually a term
from film criticism and I'm blocking on
the woman's who dreamed this up but she
pointed out how most movies were made
from the male point of view
that women were objects not subjects
they didn't have any agency and so on
and so forth
so when Elon and his pals Hawking and so
on came hey I was gonna eat our lunch
our dinner and our midnight snack - I
thought what and I said to Ed Val
oh this is the first gun first these
guys have always been the smartest guy
on the block and here comes something
that might be smarter ooh let's stamp it
out before it takes over and and laughed
he said I didn't think about it that way
but I did I did and it is the male gaze
you know okay suppose these things do
have agency well let's wait and see what
happens can we imbue them with ethics
can we imbue them with a sense of
empathy or are they just gonna be uh uh
I know we've had centuries of guys like
that that's interesting that the the ego
the male gaze is immediately threatened
and so you
can't think in a patient calm way of how
the tech could have all and he's
speaking of which here and then b6 book
the future of women no I think at the
time and now certainly now I mean I'm
sorry maybe at the time but I'm more
cognitive now is extremely relevant you
and Nancy Ramsay talk about four
possible futures right of women in
science and tech so if we look at the
decades before and after the book was
released can you tell a history sorry of
women in science and tech you know how
it has evolved how have things changed
where do we stand not enough they have
not changed enough the way that women
are ground down in computing is simply
unbelievable but what are the four
possible futures for women in tech from
the book what you're really looking at
our various aspects of the present so
for each of those you could say oh yeah
we do have backlash look at what's
happening with abortion and so on and so
forth we have one step forward one step
back as a golden age of equality was the
hardest chapter to write and I used
something from the Santa Fe Institute
which is the sand pile effect that you
drop sand very slowly onto a pile and it
grows and it grows and it grows until
suddenly it just breaks apart and in a
way me too has done that that was the
last drop of sand that broke everything
apart that was a perfect example of the
sand pile effect and that made me feel
good it didn't change all of society but
it really woke a lot of people up but I
you in general optimistic about maybe
after me - I mean me choose about a very
specific kind of thing
boy solve that and you solve everything
but are you in general optimistic about
the future yes I'm a congenital optimist
I can't help it
what about AI what are your thoughts I
went one way I of course I get asked
what you worry about and the one thing I
worry about is the things that we can't
anticipate you know there's going to be
something out of left field that what we
will just say we weren't prepared for
that I am generally optimistic when I
first took up being interested in AI
like most people in the field more
intelligence was like more virtue you
know what could be bad and in a way I
still believe that but I realized that
my notion of intelligence has broadened
there are many kinds of intelligence and
we need to imbue our machines with those
many kinds see you've now just finished
or in the process of finishing your the
book you've been working on a memoir
what how have you changed I know it's
just writing but how have you changed
the process if you look back what kind
of stuff did it bring up to you that
surprised you looking at the entirety of
it all the biggest thing and it really
wasn't a surprise is how lucky I was
oh my to be it to have access to the
beginning of a scientific field that is
going to change the world how did I luck
out and yes of course my my view of
things has widened a lot
get back to one feminist part of our
conversation without knowing it
it really was subconscious I wanted AI
to succeed because I was so tired of
hearing that intelligence was inside the
male cranium and I thought if there was
something out there that wasn't a male
thinking and doing well then that would
put a lie
to this whole notion of intelligence
resides in the male cranium I did not
know that until one night Harold Cohen
and I were having a glass of wine maybe
two and he said what drew you to AI and
I said well you know smartest people I
knew great project blah blah blah and I
said and I wanted something besides male
smarts and it just bubbled up out of me
Lex
brilliant actually so AI really humbles
all of us and humbles the people that
need to be humbled the most wow that is
so beautiful
Pamela thank you so much for talking it
was really a pleasure thank you
you