https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-2umm5-f259e4

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .

 

Every Johnson should have a Boswell, and the entire artificial intelligence field has Pamela McCorduck as its scribe. Part historian, part humorist, part raconteuse, her books romp through the history and characters of AI as both authoritative record and belles-lettres. Machines Who Think (1979, 2003) and her recent sequel This Could Be Important (2019) help understand the who, what, and why of where AI has come from.

In the second half of this interview, we talk about changes in the experience of women in computing, C. P. Snow’s “Two Cultures”, and the interaction between AI and the humanities, along with more tales of its founding fathers.

All that and our usual look at today’s headlines in AI.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

Pamela McCorduck

 

Posted by Peter Scott

Peter Scott’s résumé reads like a Monty Python punchline: half business coach, half information technology specialist, half teacher, three-quarters daddy. After receiving a master’s degree in Computer Science from Cambridge University, he has worked for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an employee and contractor for over thirty years, helping advance our exploration of the Solar System. Over the years, he branched out into writing technical books and training. Yet at the same time, he developed a parallel career in “soft” fields of human development, getting certifications in NeuroLinguistic Programming from founder John Grinder and in coaching from the International Coaching Federation. In 2007 he co-created a convention honoring the centennial of the birth of author Robert Heinlein, attended by over 700 science fiction fans and aerospace experts, a unique fusion of the visionary with the concrete. Bridging these disparate worlds positions him to envisage a delicate solution to the existential crises facing humanity. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and two daughters, writing the Human Cusp blog on dealing with exponential change.

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