OT: John McCarthy, father of artificial intelligence

[retrofit]

First Steve Jobs, then Dennis Ritchie, and now John McCarthy (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/stanford-professor-john-mccarthy-father-of-artificial-intelligence-dies-in-calif-at-84/2011/10/25/gIQAFjDgGM_story.html) :

McCarthy was a leader in the artificial intelligence field, coining the term in a 1955 research proposal. He said “every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.”

He went on to create the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab and the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, serving as its director from 1965 to 1980.

In 1958, McCarthy invented the programming language Lisp, which paved the way for voice recognition technology, including Siri, the personal assistant application on the newest iPhone.

[572cv]

Thanks for the post. An amazing mind, nothing artificial about it.

[rice rocket]

Lisp has a steeeeeeep learning curve in my experience. Too complex for my feeble mind. I'm sure others can make magic with it.

RIP John.

[benb]

Try scheme first.. very very easy to learn.

Lisp is kind of a mess cause it's got so much stuff thrown in. Scheme gets used in AI classes in college lots of the time..

Hard to really relate to this.. even as someone who took AI courses in college he was in his prime a long time ago and most of AI is pretty esoteric to the average person, even software engineers.