Chronicle of Cybernetics Pioneers BOOKS & ARTS

Home , Positronic brain

Vol 467|9 September 2010 BOOKS & ARTS Chronicle of cybernetics pioneers Rodney Brooks enjoys an account of the freewheeling group of post-war British researchers that sowed the seeds of robotics through a desire to imitate animal brains and behaviour. y

The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of TT Another Future

by Andrew Pickering ures/Ge

University of Chicago Press: 2010. CT 536 pp. $55, £35.50

I have something of a shrine in my living room — a shelf of books that have been pivotal in my life. Next to Isaac Asimov’s 1950 volume

I, Robot is W. Grey Walter’s The Living Brain Pi Life & Burrows/Time L. (1953). Asimov let me glimpse what intelligent machines could eventually become. Walter showed me the practicalities of how to build an artificial creature that could move around in the real world. Neither the positronic brain of Asimov’s fictional robot, Robbie, nor the valve-based brains of Walter’s real robots, Elsie and Elmer, were digital. Robbie was imagined around 1940 and preceded computers, and Walter’s inspiration for Elsie and Elmer, built in 1948, came from nervous systems. Walter viewed his three-wheeled wanderers — dubbed tortoises because of their domed cases and ponderous movements — as electronic models that dem- onstrated some attributes of real animals. They responded to their environment by avoiding obstacles, heading towards a light or finding a recharging station when low on power. Their performance was beaten by digital robots only in the 1980s. The fictional Robbie has yet to be surpassed. Walter was instrumental in setting up the field of cybernetics, the subject of science historian Andrew Pickering’s entertaining book. The field was named by Norbert Wiener of the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- ogy (MIT) in Cambridge, and it developed simultaneously in Britain, the United States and the Eastern bloc from the 1950s onwards. A time-lapse photo records the wanderings of W. Grey Walter’s 1940s robots Elmer (left) and Elsie. Cyberneticians were inspired by how animals work at both the neural and behavioural component with which to construct intelligent Pickering’s characters is unconventional in levels. They built mathematical and mechani- systems. They built programs to play chess and personality, research topics and academic tra- cal models to investigate such control systems prove theorems, in which the next steps were jectory. In the early 1970s, for example, Beer and to explore how machines interacted with decided by searching a tree of possible moves applied his system to the development of a their environments. and following logical rules. nationwide data network in Chile to control This approach differed from that of the field The Cybernetic Brain is the first book- factory operations; later he used it to model of artificial intelligence, which developed at length account of UK cybernetics pioneers. cosmic consciousness. the same time but emphasized information Working in parallel with Walter and his three- Pickering draws comparisons between the processing. Proponents of this field — Alan wheelers was Ross Ashby, whose early efforts British and US cybernetics institutions and Turing and Donald Michie in the United were inspired by research in psychiatry. Later, funding; the related work in Moscow, Prague Kingdom, and US advocates John McCarthy, Gordon Pask and Stafford Beer developed and Warsaw is left to others to untangle. The Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell and Herbert practical applications for cybernetics, ranging UK pioneers were inspired by biological sys- Simon — embraced symbolic search as the key from architecture to management. Each of tems and were essentially amateurs — they held

scientific appointments but their cybernetics broader intellectual base, many of them formed added new ones from evolutionary theory. work was secondary and was published in pop- an informal dining society called the Ratio A company that I co-founded has now sold ular books rather than in academic journals. Club. Pickering documents that the money more than five million domestic floor-clean- By contrast, the US work was conducted at spent on alcohol at the first meeting dwarfed ing robots, whose workings were inspired by major universities, heavily funded by the US that spent on food by nearly Walter’s tortoises. In those defence department. Some cyberneticians six to one — another indica- “British cybernetics homes at least, British cyber- at MIT, such as Warren McCullough, had tion of the cultural differ- netics lives on and dominates a background in neural modelling, but the ences between the UK and lives on and dominates robotics by sheer numbers if mainstream research carried out under Wiener US cyberneticians. robotics by sheer not by recognized intelli- arose from his work on the automatic aiming The work of the Brit- numbers if not by gence. It is a good example of and firing of anti-aircraft guns. David Mindell’s ish pioneers was forgotten how unsupported research, book Between Human and Machine (Johns until the late 1980s when it recognized intelligence.” carried out by unconven- Hopkins University Press, 2002) provides a US was rediscovered by a new tional characters in spite of counterpoint to Pickering’s account. generation of researchers. They too were their institutions, can have a huge impact. ■ With neither institutional nor government inspired by biological processes to propose Rodney Brooks is emeritus professor of robotics masters to answer to, the British cyberneti- computational models that differed from at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial cians were free to concentrate on what inter- those of the mainstream. A vibrant commu- Intelligence Laboratory and chairman of Heartland ested them. In 1949, in an attempt to develop a nity has since developed the old ideas and Robotics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA. Lessons from Climategate The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth Pearce has long covered the work of the as politically motivated time-wasters; others About Global Warming scientists involved and has a good knowl- recognize the need for greater transparency. by Fred Pearce edge of the key scientific debates, personali- Their interrogators comprise a similarly Guardian Books/Random House: 2010. ties and uncertainties. Much of the book is disparate group. 288 pp. £11.99/$19.95 drawn from his columns in the UK news- Pearce puts the contents of the leaked paper The Guardian, with the narrative follow- e-mails into their proper context. It transpires, ing the decade-long spats that dominate the for instance, that the oft-quoted “trick” to “hide After three inquiries, thousands of column corr es pondences. He gives lucid explanations the decline” refers to a graphical technique used inches and several death threats, the of points of contention, such as the urban to correct for the post-1960s breakdown in the ‘Climategate’ affair is now subsiding into the heat-island effect, interpretation of tree-ring correlation between temperature and tree-ring long grass of conspiracy blogs. The rigour data and the ‘hockey stick’ diagram of rising thickness. No smoking gun there. and honesty of the scientists involved in the temperature over time. For researchers, Pearce’s book offers insight furore sparked last November by the leaking The human side of the academics caught in into how their work can become politicized and of private e-mails from the Climatic Research the eye of the Climategate storm is handled the shortcomings of the peer-review process. Unit at the University of East Anglia in well. Their frustration with the continual The Climategate affair has already changed how Norwich, UK, have been upheld. But the questioning of their methods and requests for science is conducted and communicated. All episode offers wider lessons on the politici- raw data prompted many of the most petu- scientists should welcome the push for improved P zation and communication of research. lant e-mail exchanges. Some scientists are data archiving and greater transparency. There Grou

T After the illegally obtained e-mails were fiery in their dismissal of what they perceive are also lessons aplenty on how and how not to posted on the Internet, news- handle the media. oonis T

r papers and blogs used snip- The abuse endured by the A

/C pets of them to spin tales of climate scientists at the centre P complicity and nest-feathering of this storm is inexcusable, but rou G in climate science, of academics ultimately their experiences ers

T adept at using ‘spin’ and ‘tricks’ may help every scientist. If our ri w to keep the world from discov- future work can deliver greater T ering the grant-sapping truth. public trust after we’ve learned

on Pos on The most active mud-slingers from Climategate, then some-

GT were the usual suspects, but thing good will have come of shin phrases in the leaked messages it. The Climate Files holds those wA such as “hide the decline” lessons. ■ invited misinterpretation. The Dave S. Reay is a senior lecturer Climate Files by journalist Fred in carbon management in the

. Anderson/ . Pearce is a must for anyone who School of GeoSciences at the n wishes to look further than the University of Edinburgh, UK. headlines to form a view on His latest book is Methane and

ermission ermission how much mud should stick, Climate Change. P

By By and to whom. e-mail: [email protected]