Back in the early 90s, my grad AI class referred to AI as the "incredible shrinking field". The class kicked off with a black-and-white newsreel style interview from the 1950's with an MIT professor[1] who says, to eternal breathless infamy, something along the lines of "we'll have machines that can think within five years!"
Part of the challenge is/was the line of thinking "surely if we can solve Hard Problem X, we'll have intelligence!" This turned out to be entirely wrongheaded, since a vast litany of Hard Problems X turned out to have plain old algorithmic solutions.
[1] I keep hoping this shows up online somewhere. It was shot using a machine room as the set, where mid-century modern furniture had been brought in for guest and host!
Maybe in a few years we'll have bridged the gap between computer and machine capabilities. Not by deciding computers think, but by realizing that what humans do is computing.
That indeed looks like it, thanks. It also looks like old memory mixed up bits and pieces of it; the interview wasn't in fact set in the machine room shots.
Part of the challenge is/was the line of thinking "surely if we can solve Hard Problem X, we'll have intelligence!" This turned out to be entirely wrongheaded, since a vast litany of Hard Problems X turned out to have plain old algorithmic solutions.
[1] I keep hoping this shows up online somewhere. It was shot using a machine room as the set, where mid-century modern furniture had been brought in for guest and host!