Meet
FREDERICK Mark 2, the Pleasant Robotic for Schooling, Dialogue and Leisure, the Retrieval of Data, and the Collation of Data, higher referred to as Freddy II. This outstanding robotic might put collectively a easy mannequin automobile from an assortment of components dumped in its workspace. Its video-camera eyes and pincer hand recognized and sorted the person items earlier than assembling the specified finish product. However onlookers needed to be affected person. Meeting took about 16 hours, and that was after a day or two of “studying” and programming.
Freddy II was accomplished in 1973 as one in every of a collection of analysis robots developed by Donald Michie and his group on the College of Edinburgh in the course of the Sixties and ’70s. The robots grew to become the main focus of an intense debate over the way forward for AI in the UK. Michie ultimately misplaced, his funding was gutted, and the following AI winter set again U.Ok. analysis within the subject for a decade.
Why had been the Freddy I and II robots constructed?
In 1967,
Donald Michie, together with Richard Gregory and Hugh Christopher Longuet-Higgins, based the Division of Machine Intelligence and Notion on the College of Edinburgh with the near-term aim of growing a semiautomated robotic after which longer-term imaginative and prescient of programming “built-in cognitive methods,” or what different individuals would possibly name clever robots. On the time, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Japan’s Laptop Utilization Improvement Institute had been each contemplating plans to create totally automated factories inside a decade. The group at Edinburgh thought they need to get in on the motion too.
Two years later,
Stephen Salter and Harry G. Barrow joined Michie and set to work on Freddy I. Salter devised the {hardware} whereas Barrow designed and wrote the software program and pc interfacing. The ensuing easy robotic labored, nevertheless it was crude. The AI researcher Jean Hayes (who would marry Michie in 1971) referred to this iteration of Freddy as an “arthritic Lady of Shalott.”
Freddy I consisted of a robotic arm, a digital camera, a set of wheels, and a few bumpers to detect obstacles. As a substitute of roaming freely, it remained stationary whereas a small platform moved beneath it. Barrow developed an adaptable program that enabled Freddy I to acknowledge irregular objects. In 1969, Salter and Barrow revealed in
Machine Intelligence their outcomes, “Design of Low-Price Tools for Cognitive Robotic Analysis,” which included recommendations for the subsequent iteration of the robotic.
Freddy I, accomplished in 1969, might acknowledge objects positioned in entrance of it—on this case, a teacup.College of Edinburgh
Extra individuals joined the group to construct Freddy Mark 1.5, which they completed in Could 1971. Freddy 1.5 was a real robotic hand-eye system. The hand consisted of two vertical, parallel plates that might grip an object and elevate it off the platform. The eyes had been two cameras: one wanting straight down on the platform, and the opposite mounted obliquely on the truss that suspended the hand over the platform. Freddy 1.5’s world was a 2-meter by 2-meter sq. platform that moved in an
x–y airplane.
Freddy 1.5 shortly morphed into Freddy II because the group continued to develop. Enhancements included power transducers added to the “wrist” that might deduce the energy of the grip, the burden of the article held, and whether or not it had collided with an object. However what actually set Freddy II aside was its versatile meeting program: The robotic might be taught to acknowledge the shapes of assorted components, after which after a day or two of programming, it might assemble easy fashions. The varied steps could be seen on this prolonged video, narrated by Barrow:
The Lighthill Report Takes Down Freddy the Robotic
After which what occurred?
So a lot. However earlier than I get into all that, let me simply say that not often do I, as a historian, have the posh of getting my topics clearly articulate the goals of their tasks, think about the long run, after which, years later, replicate on their experiences. As a cherry on prime of this historian’s delight, the subject at hand—synthetic intelligence—additionally occurs to be of present curiosity to just about everybody.
As with many desirable histories of expertise, occasions activate a wholesome dose {of professional} bickering. On this case, the disputants had been Michie and the utilized mathematician
James Lighthill, who had drastically completely different concepts in regards to the course of robotics research. Lighthill favored utilized analysis, whereas Michie was extra within the theoretical and experimental prospects. Their struggle escalated shortly, grew to become public with a televised debate on the BBC, and concluded with the demise of a complete analysis subject in Britain.
A damning report in 1973 by utilized mathematician James Lighthill [left] resulted in funding being pulled from the AI and robotics program led by Donald Michie [right]. Left: Chronicle/Alamy; Proper: College of Edinburgh
It began in September 1971, when the British Science Analysis Council, which distributed public funds for scientific analysis, commissioned Lighthill to survey the state of educational analysis in artificial intelligence. The SRC was discovering it tough to make knowledgeable funding choices in AI, given the sector’s complexity. It suspected that some AI researchers’ pursuits had been too narrowly targeted, whereas others is perhaps outright charlatans. Lighthill was referred to as in to provide the SRC a street map.
No mental slouch, Lighthill was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics on the College of Cambridge, a place additionally held by Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, and Stephen Hawking. Lighthill solicited enter from students within the subject and accomplished his report in March 1972. Formally titled “
Artificial Intelligence: A General Survey,” however informally referred to as the Lighthill Report, it divided AI into three broad classes: A, for superior automation; B, for constructing robots, but additionally bridge actions between classes A and C; and C, for computer-based central nervous system analysis. Lighthill acknowledged some progress in classes A and C, in addition to a couple of disappointments.
Lighthill considered Class B, although, as a whole failure. “Progress in class B has been even slower and extra discouraging,” he wrote, “tending to sap confidence in whether or not the sector of analysis referred to as AI has any true coherence.” For good measure, he added, “AI not solely fails to take the primary fence however ignores the remainder of the steeplechase altogether.” So very British.
Lighthill concluded his report along with his view of the subsequent 25 years in AI. He predicted a “fission of the sector of AI analysis,” with some tempered optimism for achievement in classes A and C however a valley of continued failures in class B. Success would are available fields with clear purposes, he argued, however primary analysis was a misplaced trigger.
The Science Analysis Council revealed Lighthill’s report the next 12 months, with responses from
N. Stuart Sutherland of the College of Sussex and Roger M. Needham of the College of Cambridge, in addition to Michie and his colleague Longuet-Higgins.
Sutherland sought to relabel class B as “primary analysis in AI” and to have the SRC enhance funding for it. Needham largely supported Lighthill’s conclusions and referred to as for the elimination of the time period AI—“a somewhat pernicious label to connect to a really blended bunch of actions, and one might argue that the earlier we overlook it the higher.”
Longuet-Higgins targeted on his personal space of curiosity, cognitive science, and ended with an ominous warning that any spin-off of superior automation can be “extra prone to inflict a number of accidents on human society,” however he didn’t clarify what these is perhaps.
Michie, as the UK’s educational chief in robots and machine intelligence, understandably noticed the Lighthill Report as a direct assault on his analysis agenda. Along with his funding at stake, he supplied essentially the most crucial response, questioning the very basis of the survey: Did Lighthill discuss with any worldwide consultants? How did he overcome his personal biases? Did he have any sources and references that others might test? He ended with a request for
extra funding—particularly the acquisition of a DEC System 10 (often known as the PDP-10) mainframe pc. Based on Michie, if his plan had been adopted, Britain can be internationally aggressive in AI by the top of the last decade.
After Michie’s funding was reduce, the numerous researchers affiliated along with his bustling lab misplaced their jobs.College of Edinburgh
This complete affair might need remained a tutorial dispute, however then the BBC determined to incorporate a debate between Lighthill and a panel of consultants as a part of its “Controversy” TV collection. “Controversy” was an experiment to interact the general public in science. On 9 Could 1973, an however nonspecialist viewers stuffed the auditorium on the Royal Establishment in London to listen to the controversy.
Lighthill began with a evaluation of his report, explaining the variations he noticed between automation and what he referred to as “the mirage” of general-purpose robots. Michie responded with a brief movie of Freddy II assembling a mannequin, explaining how the robotic processes info. Michie argued that AI is a topic with its personal functions, its personal standards, and its personal skilled requirements.
After a short backwards and forwards between Lighthill and Michie, the present’s host turned to the opposite panelists:
John McCarthy, a professor of pc science at Stanford University, and Richard Gregory, a professor within the division of anatomy on the College of Bristol who had been Michie’s colleague at Edinburgh. McCarthy, who coined the time period synthetic intelligence in 1955, supported Michie’s place that AI ought to be its personal space of analysis, not merely a bridge between automation and a robotic that mimics a human mind. Gregory described how the work of Michie and McCarthy had influenced the sector of psychology.
You may
watch the debate or read a transcript.
A Look Again on the Lighthill Report
Regardless of worldwide assist from the AI neighborhood, although, the SRC sided with Lighthill and gutted funding for AI and robotics; Michie had misplaced. Michie’s bustling lab went from being a global heart of analysis to simply Michie, a technician, and an administrative assistant. The loss ushered within the first British AI winter, with the UK making little progress within the subject for a decade.
For his half, Michie pivoted and recovered. He decommissioned Freddy II in 1980, at which level it moved to the
Royal Museum of Scotland (now the National Museum of Scotland), and he changed it with a Unimation PUMA robot.
In 1983, Michie based the Turing Institute in Glasgow, an AI lab that labored with business on each primary and utilized analysis. The 12 months earlier than, he had written
Machine Intelligence and Associated Matters: An Data Scientist’s Weekend Guide (Gordon and Breach). Michie meant it as mental musings that he hoped scientists would learn, maybe on the weekend, to assist them get past the pursuits of the workweek. The e book is wide-ranging, overlaying his three many years of labor.
Within the introduction to the chapters overlaying Freddy and the aftermath of the Lighthill report, Michie wrote, maybe with a watch towards historical past:
“Work of excellence by gifted younger individuals was stigmatised as unhealthy science and the experiment killed in mid-trajectory. This destruction of a co-operative human mechanism and of the cautious craft of many palms is elsewhere described as a mishap. However to talk plainly, it was an outrage. In some later time when the values and strategies of science have additional expanded, and people adversary politics have contracted, will probably be seen as such.”
Historical past has certainly rendered judgment on the controversy and the Lighthill Report. In 2019, for instance, pc scientist Maarten van Emden, a colleague of Michie’s,
reflected on the demise of the Freddy undertaking with these alternative phrases for Lighthill: “a pompous fool who lent himself to provide a flaky report back to function a blatantly insufficient cowl for a hatchet job.”
And in a March 2024
post on GitHub, the blockchain entrepreneur Jeffrey Emanuel thoughtfully dissected Lighthill’s feedback and the controversy itself. Of Lighthill, he wrote, “I believe we will all be taught a really helpful lesson from this episode in regards to the risks of overconfidence and the significance of maintaining an open thoughts. The truth that such an excellent and realized particular person might be so confidently fallacious about one thing so essential ought to give us pause.”
Arguably, each Lighthill and Michie accurately predicted sure points of the AI future whereas failing to anticipate others. On the floor, the report and the controversy might be described as merely about funding. Nevertheless it was additionally extra essentially in regards to the position of educational analysis in shaping science and engineering and, by extension, society. Ideally, universities can assist each utilized analysis and extra theoretical work. When funds are restricted, although, decisions are made. Lighthill selected utilized automation as the long run, leaving analysis in AI and machine intelligence within the chilly.
It helps to take the lengthy view. Over the many years, AI analysis has cycled via a number of durations of spring and winter, growth and bust. We’re presently in one other AI growth. Is that this time completely different? Nobody could be sure what lies simply over the horizon, in fact. That very uncertainty is, I believe, one of the best argument for supporting individuals to experiment and conduct analysis into elementary questions, in order that they might assist all of us to dream up the subsequent massive factor.
A part of a continuing series taking a look at historic artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of expertise.
An abridged model of this text seems within the Could 2025 print problem as “This Robotic Was the Fall Man for British AI.”
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