Studying for the exams can sometimes be good fun! It has to do of course
with the nature of the text you are supposed to read and comprehend; (since the
majority of exam tasks relates to reading comprehension). Ocassionally we
stumble across a text that sparks up interest and a web research with
unexpected results. That happened recently with a text about the father of
Artificial Intelligence.
John McCarthy (September
4, 1927 – October 24, 2011) was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist. McCarthy was one of the founders of the discipline of artificial intelligence; he actually coined the term "Artificial Intelligence" (AI). He also developed
the Lisp programming language family, popularized Timesharing,
and was very influential in the early development of AI.
On a Stanford University
web page he talks about his sci-fi story “The Robot and the Baby”:
“This is the
first science fiction story I have put up for the public to look at. While it
was written just as a story, it partly illustrates my opinions about what
household robots should be like… The movie AI illustrates one disadvantage of
having robots with emotions or which elicit human emotions. Unless you make
them really human they will not fit into human society. Better just make them
suitable as a kind of tool…”
If you are interested in
reading more, or the short story itself, here is the link: The Robot and the Baby
