Meet
FREDERICK Mark 2, the Pleasant Robotic for Schooling, Dialogue and Leisure, the Retrieval of Info, 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 elements 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 all a sequence of analysis robots developed by Donald Michie and his staff on the College of Edinburgh through the Sixties and ’70s. The robots grew to become the main target of an intense debate over the way forward for AI in the UK. Michie finally misplaced, his funding was gutted, and the following AI winter set again U.Okay. 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 creating a semiautomated robotic after which longer-term imaginative and prescient of programming “built-in cognitive programs,” or what different folks would possibly name clever robots. On the time, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Japan’s Laptop Utilization Growth Institute had been each contemplating plans to create totally automated factories inside a decade. The staff at Edinburgh thought they need to get in on the motion too.
Two years later,
Stephen Salter and Harry G. Barrow joined Michie and started working on Freddy I. Salter devised the {hardware} whereas Barrow designed and wrote the software program and laptop 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 printed in
Machine Intelligence their outcomes, “Design of Low-Value Tools for Cognitive Robotic Analysis,” which included strategies for the following 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 folks joined the staff to construct Freddy Mark 1.5, which they completed in Might 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 raise it off the platform. The eyes had been two cameras: one wanting instantly 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 aircraft.
Freddy 1.5 shortly morphed into Freddy II because the staff continued to develop. Enhancements included pressure transducers added to the “wrist” that might deduce the power of the grip, the load of the thing 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 may very well be taught to acknowledge the shapes of assorted elements, after which after a day or two of programming, it might assemble easy fashions. The varied steps will 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 initiatives, think about the longer term, 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 totally different concepts concerning the path of robotics research. Lighthill favored utilized analysis, whereas Michie was extra within the theoretical and experimental potentialities. Their battle 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 sphere’s complexity. It suspected that some AI researchers’ pursuits had been too narrowly centered, whereas others is perhaps outright charlatans. Lighthill was referred to as in to present 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 number of disappointments.
Lighthill considered Class B, although, as an entire failure. “Progress in class B has been even slower and extra discouraging,” he wrote, “tending to sap confidence in whether or not the sphere 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 together with his view of the following 25 years in AI. He predicted a “fission of the sphere 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 functions, he argued, however fundamental analysis was a misplaced trigger.
The Science Analysis Council printed Lighthill’s report the next yr, 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 “fundamental 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 quite 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 centered 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. Together with his funding at stake, he offered essentially the most vital 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 examine? He ended with a request for
extra funding—particularly the acquisition of a DEC System 10 (often known as the PDP-10) mainframe laptop. In keeping with Michie, if his plan had been adopted, Britain can be internationally aggressive in AI by the tip of the last decade.
After Michie’s funding was reduce, the numerous researchers affiliated together with his bustling lab misplaced their jobs.College of Edinburgh
This entire affair may need remained an educational dispute, however then the BBC determined to incorporate a debate between Lighthill and a panel of consultants as a part of its “Controversy” TV sequence. “Controversy” was an experiment to have interaction the general public in science. On 9 Might 1973, an however nonspecialist viewers stuffed the auditorium on the Royal Establishment in London to listen to the controversy.
Lighthill began with a evaluate 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 data. 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 laptop 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 needs 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 sphere of psychology.
You possibly can
watch the debate or read a transcript.
A Look Again on the Lighthill Report
Regardless of worldwide assist from the AI group, 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 middle of analysis to only 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 fundamental and utilized analysis. The yr earlier than, he had written
Machine Intelligence and Associated Matters: An Info Scientist’s Weekend E book (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, protecting his three many years of labor.
Within the introduction to the chapters protecting Freddy and the aftermath of the Lighthill report, Michie wrote, maybe with a watch towards historical past:
“Work of excellence by proficient younger folks 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, it will likely be seen as such.”
Historical past has certainly rendered judgment on the controversy and the Lighthill Report. In 2019, for instance, laptop scientist Maarten van Emden, a colleague of Michie’s,
reflected on the demise of the Freddy mission with these selection 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 feel we are able to all be taught a really priceless lesson from this episode concerning the risks of overconfidence and the significance of conserving an open thoughts. The truth that such an excellent and realized particular person may very well be so confidently improper about one thing so essential ought to give us pause.”
Arguably, each Lighthill and Michie appropriately predicted sure features of the AI future whereas failing to anticipate others. On the floor, the report and the controversy may very well be described as merely about funding. Nevertheless it was additionally extra basically concerning the function 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 longer term, 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 by a number of intervals of spring and winter, growth and bust. We’re presently in one other AI growth. Is that this time totally different? Nobody will be sure what lies simply over the horizon, after all. That very uncertainty is, I feel, one of the best argument for supporting folks to experiment and conduct analysis into elementary questions, in order that they might assist all of us to dream up the following large 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 Might 2025 print concern as “This Robotic Was the Fall Man for British AI.”
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