Le mois d’octobre est meurtrier : John McCarthy, créateur de #Lisp (et inventeur du terme « Intelligence Artificielle ») vient de mourir.
►http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/creator-of-lisp-john-mccarthy-dead-at-84
►http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/10/john-mccarthy-father-of-ai-and-lisp-dies-at-84
►http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/10/jmc-rip
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/25/john-mccarthy
As far back as the mid-60s, chess was called the “Drosophila of artificial intelligence” — a reference to the fruit flies biologists used to uncover the secrets of genetics — and McCarthy believed his successors in AI research had taken the analogy too far.
“Computer chess has developed much as genetics might have if the geneticists had concentrated their efforts starting in 1910 on breeding racing Drosophila,” McCarthy wrote following Deep Blue’s win. “We would have some science, but mainly we would have very fast fruit flies.”
Sur son site personnel, il publie ses mémoires d’une affaire de tentative de censure des newsgroups à Stanford. Ces barbus de l’informatique sont vraiment sympathiques.
THE REC.HUMOR.FUNNY CENSORSHIP AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY (23-Oct-2002)
►http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/rhf.html
10. President Donald Kennedy of Stanford refers issue to Academic Senate. When I visit him to complain, he suggests that the Steering Committee of the Senate will refer the matter to a committee for a recommendation, e.g. the Committee on Research. I don’t think newsgroups were a matter of research and don’t like the fact that Street is an ex-officio member of that committee. It occurred to me that the Committee on Libraries would be more appropriate, since the traditions of freedom of speech and press apply as much to electronic media as to print media.