AI - nothing new under the sun?
F or the past week I have worked alot with the history of AI for an upcoming course on AI and archives which I will be part of the teaching team during the next semester. This area have been rather tricky for me as a scholar in humanities to learn about, since most of the text is rather technical and does not really have historians as a point of departure. The texts that have been written as a way to popularize are also filled with technical terms such as "neural networks" which they seem to think is rather obvious terms for scholars from all fields. Yet I have read some technical courses at the university, and this have helped alot. I have even managed to read some of Alan Turings original writing, and apart from the math I found rather interesting. What I however have come learn during this week is actually how complex the notion of AI really is. Basically the idea of living machines have been part of western culture since ancient greece with Heifastos golden robots and f...