[SIGCIS-Members] Question related to theoretical computer science

[Hansen Hsu]

Nils Nilsson’s book might have some useful references to Winograd’s blocks world papers. Look for the chapter in which he discusses Winograd’s SHRDLU program.

Nilsson, Nils J. The Quest for Artificial Intelligence. 1st edition. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

For Winograd, I have a couple of references:

Winograd, Terry. “Thinking Machines : Can There Be? Are We?” In The Boundaries of Humanity : Humans, Animals, Machines, edited by James Sheehan and Morton Sosna, 198–223. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
Winograd, Terry, and Fernando Flores. Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design. Norwood  N.J.: Ablex Pub. Corp., 1986.

I’ve only read parts of the latter, so I don’t know how much he discusses his earlier work on SHRDLU in here, but the latter incorporates a bit of Hubert Dreyfus’s brand of phenomenology into a critique of the AI being done at the time, which basically critiques Winograd’s own earlier work on SHRDLU.
Agre’s book that I mentioned earlier can be thought of as in this critical AI/HCI tradition.

> 
> El mié., 31 mar. 2021 21:49, Hansen Hsu <hansnhsu at gmail.com <mailto:hansnhsu at gmail.com>> escribió:
> Hi Javier,
> 
> I think there probably is a significant relationship between AI research on games and microworlds.
> For microworlds, I’d look into the blocks world research that was done at MIT, particularly that of Terry Winograd.
> MIT was also where Spacewar! was created by Steve Russell, and there was also significant early chess research done there by a group led by Alan Kotok, student of John McCarthy, and later by Richard Greenblatt.
> Both ideas are in the air among MIT’s CS researchers in the 1960s, so there has to be some connection.
> 
> I have a couple of blog posts on AI in chess and Go up at the Computer History Museum blog:
> https://computerhistory.org/blog/ai-and-play-part-1-how-games-have-driven-two-schools-of-ai-research/ <https://computerhistory.org/blog/ai-and-play-part-1-how-games-have-driven-two-schools-of-ai-research/>
> https://computerhistory.org/blog/ai-and-play-part-2-go-and-deep-learning/ <https://computerhistory.org/blog/ai-and-play-part-2-go-and-deep-learning/>
> The content itself may not be as useful to you as the links to various other resources in our collection, including videos of our oral histories and events related to chess, including oral histories of Kotok and Greenblatt.
> These also have links to our online chess exhibit, which itself has links to some items and video clips in our collection on chess.
> https://www.computerhistory.org/chess/ <https://www.computerhistory.org/chess/>
> 
> You can search our collection here:
> https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/search/ <https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/search/>
> 
> Critical AI researcher Phil Agre’s book
> Agre, Philip E. Computation and Human Experience. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
> makes an explicit connection between microworlds and games as he uses the microworld of the videogame Pengi to test an AI to play the game.
> This is a bit later than the 1960s though.
> 
> 
>> On Mar 31, 2021, at 10:41 AM, Javier Poveda F <jpovedaf at gmail.com <mailto:jpovedaf at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Dear all,
>> 
>> 
>> My name is Javier Ramiro Poveda Figueroa, PhD candidate in history of science at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. I am interested in the study of history and philosophy of computing from the 1930s until the 1990s. I am researching in the relationship between early computing games like chess and checkers with microworlds. For that reason, I am searching literature that can help me to understand whether microworlds and early computing games have are related or not. I would like to know if you have any information about the problem I am working with. Your help will be valuable.
>> 
>> 
>> Kind regards,
>> 
>> 
>> Javier Poveda Figueroa.
>> _______________________________________________
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