Herbert A. Simon? Allen Newell? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: In the 1950s a pair of prominent researchers made several provocative predictions about artificial intelligence. The researchers believed that a computer program would become the world chess champion within a decade. They also believed that most psychological theories in the future would take the form of computer programs.
Today, achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the controversial goal of trillion dollar companies. The 1950s researchers envisioned AI systems whose ability to handle problems was “coextensive with the range to which the human mind has been applied”.
Would you please help me identify the researchers and determine the precise predictions?
Reply from Quote Investigator: Herbert A. Simon, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978, delivered a speech in 1957 at a meeting of the Operations Research Society of America. Simon’s address was based on a paper that he co-authored with computer scientist Allen Newell and published in 1958. The paper included the following four predictions:1
1. That within ten years a digital computer will be the world’s chess champion, unless the rules bar it from competition.
2. That within ten years a digital computer will discover and prove an important new mathematical theorem.
3. That within ten years a digital computer will write music that will be accepted by critics as possessing considerable aesthetic value.
4. That within ten years most theories in psychology will take the form of computer programs, or of qualitative statements about the characteristics of computer programs.
Simon and Newell also made a more general prediction in their 1958 article. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:
. . . there are now in the world machines that think, that learn, and that create. Moreover, their ability to do these things is going to increase rapidly until—in a visible future—the range of problems they can handle will be coextensive with the range to which the human mind has been applied.
Regarding the first prediction, a computer did not beat the world chess champion in 1958; however, in 1997 the Deep Blue chess computer did beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match.2
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1962 the collection “The Age of the Manager: A Treasury of Our Times” included a chapter by Harold J. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler which cited Simon and Newell and stated the following:3
Current research on the machine simulation of higher mental processes suggests that we will be able to program much of the top job before too many decades have passed.
There is good authority for the prediction that within ten years a digital computer will be the world’s chess champion, and that another will discover and prove an important new mathematical theorem; and that in the somewhat more distant future “the way is open to deal scientifically with ill-structured problems—to make the computer coextensive with the human mind.”
In 1974 philosopher and AI critic Hubert Dreyfus referred to the predictions:4
It is fitting to begin with a statement made in 1957 by H. A. Simon, one of the originators of the field of artificial intelligence:
It is not my aim to surprise or shock you. … But the simplest way I can summarize is to say that there are now in the world machines that think, that learn and that create. Moreover, their ability to do these things is going to increase rapidly until—in a visible future—the range of problems they can handle will be co-extensive with the range to which the human mind has been applied.
In 2010 the textbook “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach” by Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig commented on the predictions:5
Terms such as “visible future” can be interpreted in various ways, but Simon also made more concrete predictions: that within 10 years a computer would be chess champion, and a significant mathematical theorem would be proved by machine. These predictions came true (or approximately true) within 40 years rather than 10.
Simon’s overconfidence was due to the promising performance of early AI systems on simple examples. In almost all cases, however, these early systems turned out to fail miserably when tried out on wider selections of problems and on more difficult problems.
In summary, in 1957 Herbert A. Simon and Allen Newell made a startling set predictions about the progress they expected in artificial intelligence within a decade. None of the advances foreseen were achieved within the time limit specified. Nevertheless, enormous progress has occurred during the past 67 years.
Image Notes: Illustration of a brain from Milad Fakurian at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to anonymous person whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1958 January-February, Operations Research, Volume 6, Number 1, Heuristic Problem Solving: The Next Advance in Operations Research by Herbert A. Simon and Allen Newell, Start Page 1, Quote Page 7 and 8, Publisher INFORMS; Operations Research Society of America, Baltimore, Maryland. (JSTOR) link ↩︎
- 1997 May 12, New York Times, Swift and Slashing, Computer Topples Kasparov by Bruce Weber, Quote Page 1, Column 2, (Note: This article described Deep Blue victory over Garry Kasparov), New York. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 1962, The Age of the Manager: A Treasury of Our Times, Edited by Robert Manley and Seon Manley, Quote Page 423, Part 6: Management Man: His Future, Chapter 33: Management in the 1980’s by Harold J. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler (From Harvard Business Review, November-December, 1958), The Macmillan Company, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1974 March, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Volume 412, Issue theme: The Information Revolution, Article: Artificial Intelligence by Hubert L. Dreyfus, Start Page 21, Quote Page 22, The American Academy of Political and Social Science, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. (JSTOR) link ↩︎
- 2010, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig, Third Edition, Chapter 1: Introduction, Quote Page 20 and 21, Prentice Hall: An Imprint of Pearson, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. (Verified with scans) ↩︎