https://github.com/mmcguill/historical-ai
A repository to collect papers and programs of historical interest to AI. Mostly gathered while reading Pamela McCurdock's Machines Who Think
https://github.com/mmcguill/historical-ai
artificial-intelligence intelligence logic-theory-machine mccarthy minsky newell shannon shaw simon
Last synced: 3 months ago
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A repository to collect papers and programs of historical interest to AI. Mostly gathered while reading Pamela McCurdock's Machines Who Think
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/mmcguill/historical-ai
- Owner: mmcguill
- License: mit
- Created: 2019-11-27T03:25:54.000Z (over 6 years ago)
- Default Branch: master
- Last Pushed: 2020-01-28T15:00:21.000Z (over 6 years ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-08-12T21:48:25.571Z (10 months ago)
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, intelligence, logic-theory-machine, mccarthy, minsky, newell, shannon, shaw, simon
- Size: 30.6 MB
- Stars: 22
- Watchers: 3
- Forks: 6
- Open Issues: 1
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- License: LICENSE
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README
# Historical AI
A repository to collect papers and programs of historical interest to AI. Mostly gathered while reading Pamela McCorduck's Machines Who Think
### Must Reads
- [Newell (1965) - Limitations of the Current Stock of Ideas about Problem Solving](./Papers/Newell%20(1965)%20-%20Limitations%20of%20the%20Current%20Stock%20of%20Ideas%20about%20Problem%20Solving.pdf)
- [Minsky (1961) - Steps Toward Artificial Intelligence](Papers/Minsky%20(1961)%20-%20Steps%20Toward%20Artificial%20Intelligence.pdf)
- [McCarthy & Hayes (1969) - Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence](./Papers/McCarthy,%20Hayes%20(1969)%20-%20Some%20Philosophical%20Problems%20from%20the%20Standpoint%20of%20Artificial%20Intelligence.pdf)
## Beginnings
### Turing - Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950)
[Paper](./Papers/Turing%20(1950)%20-%20Computing%20Machinery%20and%20Intelligence.pdf)
Turing's seminal AI work... A nice read with a curious section about ESP!
### Shannon - A Chess-Playing Machine (1950)
[Paper](./Papers/Shannon%20(1950)%20-%20Programming%20a%20Computer%20for%20Playing%20Chess.pdf)
Claude Shannon's original 1950 paper...
An article in Scientific American. Super readable...
[Scientific American Article](./Papers/Shannon%20(1950)%20-%20A%20Chess-Playing%20Machine.pdf)
### McCarthy, Minsky, Rochester, Shannon (1955) - A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence
[Paper](Papers/McCarthy,%20Minsky,%20Rochester,%20Shannon%20(1955)%20-%20A%20Proposal%20for%20the%20Dartmouth%20Summer%20Research%20Project%20on%20Artificial%20Intelligence.pdf)
### Newell, Simon & Shaw - The Logic Theory Machine (1956)
[Paper](Papers/Newell%20&%20Simon%20%281956%29%20-%20The%20Logic%20Theory%20Machine.pdf)
Proved 38 of the first 52 theorems in Russell & Whitehead's Principia Mathematica and even found a new and better proof for one.
Source Code has not been transcribed and doesn't appear to be easily available.
### McCarthy (1959) - Programs with Common Sense (Advice Taker)
[Paper](Papers/McCarthy%20(1959)%20-%20Programs%20with%20Common%20Sense.pdf)
Early speculative paper on something McCarthy called the "Advice Taker". Possibly the first paper mentioning "Common Sense" in terms of AI. Also contains an interesting discussion with Bar-Hillel and Selfridge as an appendix.
## Minsky's Classic Overview (1961)
### Minsky (1961) - Steps Toward Artificial Intelligence
[Paper](Papers/Minsky%20(1961)%20-%20Steps%20Toward%20Artificial%20Intelligence.pdf)
A sort of summary/review article covering the approaches and advances in AI at that time
## GPS - General Problem Solver
### 1958 - Newell, Simon & Shaw - Chess-Playing Programs and the Problem of Complexity
[Paper](./Papers/Newell,%20Shaw,%20Simon%20(1958)%20-%20Chess-Playing%20Programs%20and%20the%20Problem%20of%20Complexity.pdf)
### 1959 - Newell, Shaw, Simon - Report on a General Problem Solving Program
[Paper](./Papers/Newell,%20Shaw,%20Simon%20(1959)%20-%20Report_On_A_General_Problem-Solving_Program.pdf)
Very generic extension of their Logic Theory Machine, separating problem domain from the process of problem solving and introducing concepts like Means End Analysis, Planning, Goals, Sub-Goals and Differences.
A more readable paper with emphasis on the comparison between how GPS works versus human subjects...
### 1963 - GPS - A Program That Simulates Human Thought
[Newell & Simon (1963) - GPS - A Program That Simulates Human Thought](./Papers/Newell%20&%20Simon%20(1963)%20-%20GPS%20-%20A%20Program%20That%20Simulates%20Human%20Thought.pdf)
## Roughly Chronological Highlights
### Green, Wolf, Chomsky, Laughery (1961) - BASEBALL - An Automatic Question-Answerer
[Paper](./Papers/Green,%20Wolf,%20Chomsky,%20Laughery%20(1961)%20-%20BASEBALL%20-%20An%20Automatic%20Question-Answerer.pdf)
This program could answer questions about baseball (for a specific year) specified in plain english using syntactic analysis...
### Lindsay (1963) - Inferential Memory as the Basis of Machines Which Understand Natural Language (SAD SAM)
[Paper](./Papers/Lindsay%20(1963)%20-%20Inferential%20Memory%20as%20the%20Basis%20of%20Machines%20Which%20Understand%20Natural%20Language.pdf)
Hardly mentioned in the paper, which is more of an early analysis (an excellent one) of the difficulties of natural language processing, is SAD SAM which was the name of the program which could examine kinship relations.
### Bobrow (1964) - Natural Language Input for a Computer Problem Solving System (STUDENT)
[Paper](./Papers/Bobrow%20(1964)%20-%20Natural%20Language%20Input%20for%20a%20Computer%20Problem%20Solving%20System.pdf)
STUDENT was a LISP program that could accept mathematical puzzles in a limited set of English, and solve them.
### Evans (1964) - A Heuristic Program to Solve Geometric-Analogy Problems (ANALOGY)
[Paper](./Papers/Evans%20(1964)%20-%20A%20Heuristic%20Program%20to%20Solve%20Geometric-Analogy%20Problems.pdf)
ANALOGY was a LISP program designed to solve simple Geometric Analogy problems like '''Figure A is to Figure B as Figure C is to...'''
### Newell, Ernst (1965) - The Search for Generality
[Paper](./Papers/Newell,%20Ernst%20(1965)%20-%20The%20Search%20for%20Generality.pdf)
### Newell (1965) - Limitations of the Current Stock of Ideas about Problem Solving
[Paper](./Papers/Newell%20(1965)%20-%20Limitations%20of%20the%20Current%20Stock%20of%20Ideas%20about%20Problem%20Solving.pdf)
This is magnificent. Short, concise survey of the known methods of solving problems, and an incisive look at a problem we don't know how we could go about solving/proving, and how we as humans come across the solution from 'out of nowhere'... The example problem is the 'mutilated chess board' checker problem.
### Weizenbaum - ELIZA (1966)
[Paper](./Papers/Weizenabaum%20%281966%29%20-%20ELIZA.pdf)
Live version can be found here: https://www.masswerk.at/elizabot/
- Javascript version: https://github.com/brandongmwong/elizabot-js
- Python version: https://github.com/wadetb/eliza
Much more detail on all kinds of ELIZAs here:
- http://elizagen.org/
- https://github.com/jeffshrager/elizagen
### McCarthy & Hayes (1969) - Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence
[Paper](./Papers/McCarthy,%20Hayes%20(1969)%20-%20Some%20Philosophical%20Problems%20from%20the%20Standpoint%20of%20Artificial%20Intelligence.pdf)
Detailed and philosophical approach to the problems of AI, trying to develop a mathematical logic approach to it. Discussion of Modal logics of the time as possibly useful.
### SHRDLU - Winograd (1971)
A couple of modern/ports are available on github:
- https://github.com/stuartpb/shrdlu
- https://github.com/tsgouros/www-shrdlu
Very early natural language understanding system written in Lisp by Terry Winograd. The system manipulates a simple block world by accepting commands in English. The original paper/thesis is available here:
http://hci.stanford.edu/winograd/shrdlu/AITR-235.pdf
### Reddy (1974) - The HEARSAY Speech Understanding System
[Paper](./Papers/Reddy%20(1974)%20-%20The%20HEARSAY%20Speech%20Understanding%20System.pdf)
Early speech recognition within a domain (Chess Moves)
### Shortliffe (1975) - A model of inexact reasoning in medicine (The MYCIN system)
[Paper](./Papers/Shortliffe%20(1975)%20-%20A%20model%20of%20inexact%20reasoning%20in%20medicine.pdf)
### Copycat - Hofstadter & Mitchell (Fluid Analogies Research Group (FARG))
A modern python port of the analogy making program Copycat can be found here:
https://github.com/fargonauts/copycat
# Fun
### Cadwallader-Cohen (1961) - The Chaostron - An Important Advance in Learning Machines
[Paper](./Papers/Cadwallader-Cohen%20(1961)%20-%20The%20Chaostron%20-%20An%20Important%20Advance%20in%20Learning%20Machines.pdf)