I Had a Dream: AAAI Presidential Address, August 1985

Twenty-five years ago I had a dream, a daydream, if you will. A dream shared with many of you. I dreamed of a special kind of computer, which had eyes and ears and arms and legs, in addition to its “brain.” I did not dream that this new computer friend would be a means of making money for me or my employer or a help for my country-though I loved my country then and still do, and I have no objection to making money. I did not even dream of such a worthy cause as helping the poor and handicapped of the world using this marvelous new machine. No, my dream was filled with the wild excitement of seeing a machine act like a human being, at least in many ways. I wanted it to read printed characters on a page and handwritten script as well. I could see it! or a part of it: in a small camera that would fit on my glasses, with an attached earplug that would whisper into my ear the names of my friends and acquaintances as I met them on the street. Or in a telephone that allowed me to converse with a friend in Germany, he in German and me in English. For you see, my computer friend had the ability to recognize faces, synthesize voice, understand spoken sentences, and translate languages, and things like that. 1’11 admit that in 1960 my computer person had a much larger head than I envision for it now. Because I then didn’t know about microcomputers. My dream computer person liked to walk and play Ping-Pong, especially with me. And I liked to teach it things-because it could learn dexterity skills as well as mental concepts. And much more. When I awoke from this daydream, I found that we didn’t have these things, but we did have some remarkable computers, even then, so I decided then and there to quit