cybernetics
In plain wordsThe study of how animals, machines and organizations steer themselves using feedback: sensing the result of an action and correcting course. It was both a parent and an early rival of AI.
An interdisciplinary science that analyzes organisms and machines in common terms — feedback, information, regulation and self-organization — as systems that steer themselves toward goals. Its central claim was that purposeful behavior can be explained by negative feedback: a system measures the gap between its present state and its goal and acts to narrow it, as thermostats, anti-aircraft fire predictors and the body's homeostasis do. It brought together mathematicians, engineers, neurophysiologists, psychologists and anthropologists, notably at the Macy Conferences (1946–1953), and produced early adaptive machines such as W. Grey Walter's robot tortoises and W. Ross Ashby's homeostat. After the Dartmouth workshopDartmouth workshop, prop. n.: A summer meeting of scientists at Dartmouth College in 1956, planned in a 1955 funding proposal that first used the phrase 'artificial intelligence'. Most histories treat it as the moment AI became a research field of its own. of 1956, symbolic AIsymbolic AI, n.: An approach to AI that writes knowledge down as human-readable symbols and rules, such as 'every bird has wings', and reasons by manipulating them step by step instead of learning patterns from data. largely displaced cybernetics in American computer science, but its ideas persist in control theory, reinforcement learningreinforcement learning, n.: A way of teaching a computer program by trial and error: it tries actions, earns points for good results and penalties for bad ones, and gradually learns which choices pay off over time., roboticsrobotics, n.: The science and engineering of building robots and making them work: designing their bodies, sensors and motors, and writing the software that lets them see, plan and move safely. and systems thinking.
Before 'artificial intelligence' was coined, machines that adapted to their surroundings were studied under the banner of cybernetics.
Origin
Norbert WienerNorbert Wiener, prop. n.: An American mathematician who founded cybernetics, the study of feedback and control in animals and machines, and warned early that machines might pursue goals we did not truly intend. named the field in Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948), from the Greek kybernētēs, 'steersman'. André-Marie Ampère had used cybernétique in 1834 for the art of government. The prefix cyber-, as in cyberspace and cybersecurity, descends from the word.
Usage note
John McCarthy said he chose the name 'artificial intelligence' partly to avoid being drawn into cybernetics and Wiener's orbit.
Related
- Norbert WienerNorbert Wiener, prop. n.: An American mathematician who founded cybernetics, the study of feedback and control in animals and machines, and warned early that machines might pursue goals we did not truly intend.
- Dartmouth workshopDartmouth workshop, prop. n.: A summer meeting of scientists at Dartmouth College in 1956, planned in a 1955 funding proposal that first used the phrase 'artificial intelligence'. Most histories treat it as the moment AI became a research field of its own.
- McCulloch–Pitts neuronMcCulloch–Pitts neuron, n.: The first mathematical model of a brain cell as a simple on–off switch: it fires if enough of its inputs are on and no blocking input is. Networks of them can carry out logic.
- artificial intelligenceartificial intelligence, n.: Computer systems that do things we would normally credit to a thinking mind, such as holding a conversation, reading an X-ray or planning a route, and the field of research that builds them.
- connectionismconnectionism, n.: The view that minds and intelligent machines are best built from huge networks of simple, neuron-like units whose connection strengths are learned, rather than from explicit rules and symbols.
- roboticsrobotics, n.: The science and engineering of building robots and making them work: designing their bodies, sensors and motors, and writing the software that lets them see, plan and move safely.
Sources
- Wiener, N. (1948). Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Paris: Hermann; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mentioned in
artificial intelligenceartificial intelligence, n.: Computer systems that do things we would normally credit to a thinking mind, such as holding a conversation, reading an X-ray or planning a route, and the field of research that builds them., control theorycontrol theory, n.: The mathematics of making machines behave as intended by constantly measuring what they are doing and correcting them, as a thermostat, cruise control or self-balancing robot does., Dartmouth workshopDartmouth workshop, prop. n.: A summer meeting of scientists at Dartmouth College in 1956, planned in a 1955 funding proposal that first used the phrase 'artificial intelligence'. Most histories treat it as the moment AI became a research field of its own., feedback loopfeedback loop, n.: A cycle in which what a system produces comes back to shape its own future input, like a microphone howling near its loudspeaker. In AI, a model's predictions can shape the very data it later learns from., John von NeumannJohn von Neumann, prop. n.: A Hungarian-American mathematician who shaped the design of modern computers, co-founded game theory, and is the first person known to have spoken of a coming technological 'singularity'., McCulloch–Pitts neuronMcCulloch–Pitts neuron, n.: The first mathematical model of a brain cell as a simple on–off switch: it fires if enough of its inputs are on and no blocking input is. Networks of them can carry out logic., Norbert WienerNorbert Wiener, prop. n.: An American mathematician who founded cybernetics, the study of feedback and control in animals and machines, and warned early that machines might pursue goals we did not truly intend., Warren McCullochWarren McCulloch, prop. n.: An American brain scientist who, with Walter Pitts, wrote the 1943 paper that first described nerve cells as simple logic units, the seed of today's artificial neural networks., Walter PittsWalter Pitts, prop. n.: A largely self-taught American logician who, at about 20 and without a degree, co-invented with Warren McCulloch a simple logical model of a brain cell, the starting point of neural networks.