Jonnie Penn, the Economist
At RAND, Simon and two colleagues—Allan Newell, a young mathematician, and J. Clifford Shaw, a former insurance actuary—tried to model human problem-solving in terms that a computer could put into operation. To do so, Simon borrowed elements from the framework that he had developed in “Administrative Behaviour”. To make a computer “think” as a human, Simon made it think like a corporation. The product of the trio’s labour was a virtual machine called the Logic Theorist, heralded as the first working prototype of artificial intelligence. Printouts of the Theorist in operation turned heads at the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, which gave the field its name and initial membership. In notes from the Dartmouth conference, one participant wrote that the Theorist helped to solve the dreaded “demo to sponsor” problem. This was essential, because the foundation funding AI was sceptical that the research area was worthwhile.
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/11/26/ai-thinks-like-a-corporation-and-thats-worrying
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