A Tale of Perceptrons
In the 1950s, the nascent field of artificial intelligence was split into rivaling factions. Two groups competed for academic mindshare: the top dogs were the “symbolists,” led by authorities such as Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy; the runners-up were the “connectionists,” led by the charismatic Frank Rosenblatt.
The two tribes had very different approaches. The symbolists believed in programming an intelligent machine from the ground up. Piece by piece, they planned to build computers that would eventually manipulate concepts faster and better than humans.
This idea might sound overly optimistic today, but it made perfect sense in the 1950s, when people were inventing the first high-level programming languages. Those ...
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