Computers and Common Sense. The Myth of Thinking Machines.

early ai scepticism from an insider

First edition of an important early critique of artificial intelligence. Presentation copy inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, 'To Cooper Bright, with deep fondness, Mortimer Taube'. Rare inscribed and with the dust jacket. Not in Hook & Norman, Origins of Cyberspace.

Mortimer Taube (1910-1965) was a leader in American library and information science, the developer of Coordinate Indexing, the precursor to computer based searching. After spending the first half of his career in academia, he worked for the Library of Congress and Atomic Energy Commission, then founded Documentation Inc., a successful information centre catering to the aerospace industry and NASA.

The present volume, Taube's magnum opus, is considered a lost classic of computing literature. It critiques the General Problem Solver program, designed for RAND in 1957, and discusses the feasibility of mechanical translation, 'learning-machines', and linguistic analysis, as well as human-machine working relationships, especially within defense systems.

'Despite technical changes in AI, much of Taube's criticism remains relevant today. Moreover, his status as an "information processing" insider who criticized AI on behalf of the public good challenges the boundaries and focus of most critiques of AI from the past half-century. In sum, Taube's work offers an alternative model from which contemporary AI workers and critics can learn much' (Garvey, 'The General problem Solver Does Not Exist: Mortimer Taube and the Art of AI Criticism', IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 43, issue 1, 2021).

First edition, first printing, inscribed presentation copy; 8vo; spotting to endpapers, blanks, and edges of text block; original blue cloth, titles to spine and publisher's roundel to upper board in silver, spine rolled, faded spots at the spine ends, a very good copy in the rubbed and toned jacket with small chips from the corners and ends of the spine panel, some light dampstain.