(4of5) The Machine that Changed the World: The Thinking Machine. 1992 Documentary

(4of5) The Machine That Changed the World: The Thinking Machine. (1992) (Documentary)

Documentary overview:
The Machine That Changed the World is the longest, most comprehensive documentary about the history of computing ever produced, but since its release in 1992, it's become virtually extinct. Out of print and never released online, the only remaining copies are VHS tapes floating around school libraries or in the homes of fans who dubbed the original shows when they aired.

Video Description:
The history of artificial intelligence, from Minsky to neural networks.

The fourth episode of The Machine That Changed the World covers the history of artificial intelligence and the challenges that come from trying to teach computers to think and learn like us.

Key People/Concepts:
Jerome B. Wiesner, Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Oliver Selfridge of Lincoln Labs, Claude Shannon, Freddy Robot at the University of Edinburgh, Sir James Lighthill, Terry Winograd's SHRDLU, Edward Feigenbaum's work on expert systems, Doug Lenat's Cyc project, Oliver Sacks, neural networks, NETtalk

Interviews:
Marvin Minsky (MIT), Hubert Dreyfus (UC Berkeley), Edward Feigenbaum (Stanford University), Hans Moravec (Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute), Doug Lenat (University of Texas, Austin), Dean Pomerleau (Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute), Terrence Sejnowski (Salk Institute)

Watch Part (1of5)
Giant Brains
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcR74y...

Watch Part (2of5)
Inventing the Future
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1APZ5-...

Watch Part (3of5)
The Paperback Computer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwC3gO...

Watch Part (5of5)
The World at Your Fingertips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_3A2j...

• Category

  Science & Technology

[12me91]

Who the heck wouldn't want a spare kite?

[michalchik]

There are a lot of people in the field, including me, that think that Chinese room analogy is misleading. The intelligence of the room does not lie in the person, or the book, or the physical room. It lies in the total system. It is an emergent property of all the parts interacting in the whole dynamic system.

[Dean Abbott]

Thanks for posting this. I still have my old VHS tapes of this but have not yet digitized them (I did digitize a few segments years ago for teaching purposes).

[Nachalnika]

15:00 the fact of the idea to talk distantly with a human only though ! is today what we know as skype oovoo or other voip soft. nice people though of this back then back it came to reality also as email and etc by late 1990s.

[Nachalnika]

the previous video shows first 3d device ! wow so we are only reinventing the previous tech more likely upgrading it to a new level. But the tech today is way better compared to what it was b4.

[bigfatlemons]

6:38 it's funny how she's just reading off a piece of paper

[verdatum]

Perhaps this is just because it's presently 4am,  but that comment was fall-to-the-floor about-to-wet-myself" funny.

[stevenvh17]

Like michalchik says they almost always used existing ideas. If you read Lorentz' transformation equations special relativity simply jumps out of it! And if you think Edison worked in solitude, think again: his Menlo Park lab was gigantic, and he had dozens of assistants there.

"No man is an island" -- John Donne

[Assi2004]

Nobody starts at zero, everyone uses someone elses work, who used someones work, who used someones work, who....

There is no way around that, u cant start at zero.

Einstein published the special theorie with 26.

The lak of equations was ended with his general relativity, worked out in years of hard work.

[michalchik]

Einsteins work in special relativity had almost no original equations and was reliant on the work of La Place and based on Michaelson's experiments, General Relativity relied on Noether's and Riemann's transforms, Photoelectric effect that he won the noble prize for was discovered Hertz and utilized Planks photon quantization calculations. Edison had worked hard to refine other peoples ideas and market them but had few of his own. Nobel, simply stabilized NG which was invented by Sobrero and ...

[Assi2004]

No, the exact oposite is what happens in reality.

All the great scientists, inventors etc. were geniuses, mostly working alone, not a bunch of people working together.

Sure you obviously need both to get somewhere.

Just to name some that everyone knows that pushed Mankind a huge step forward:

Albert Einstein, T. A. Edison, Alfred Nobel, Leonardo Davinci

To point out how it works:

Even if u have 1'000 dogs working on a problem, u woont get anywhere. U need someone smart enough to do it.

[michalchik]

If you are pointing out that a bunch of collaborating people can do more than one smart talented person, and that is an emergent property, i agree.