The field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) began in 1956 at a conference at Dartmouth University.

  John McCarthy, a math professor at Dartmouth, had written a proposal and received a $7,500 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

McCarthy had framed his proposal this way:

"...a two-month, ten-man study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely stated that a machine can be made to simulate it. "

  It's an interesting question to ask why the Rockefeller Foundation would be interested in funding a project to simulate human intelligence.

The answer would appear several years later when the United States Department of Defense began to fund human personality simulation projects with the stated purpose of "controlling human behavior."

  One of the researchers the Department of Defense funded over many years was a Freudian psychiatrist at Stanford University by the name of Kenneth J. Colby. He developed computer systems to simulate the mind for the express purpose of influencing and controling the behavior of his psychiatric patients.

  Colby developed three models of the human personality over several years of research:

1. Model of a neurotic woman suffering from anxiety in relation to men
2. Artificial belief system - a "child brain"
3. Model of paranoid processes - which later was nicknamed Parry

Colby's models of the human mind were based on these principles:

1. The credibility of a belief is based on the credibility of its source
2. Human personalities are based on belief systems: beliefs about significant persons, including the self
3. Every psychological concept has specific significance to the person: e.g. father, love
4. Input from others is evaluated and "colored" by mental patterns such as fear or anger
5. A human's mind changes with inner conflict; it transforms beliefs to fit into an overall pattern

Implications of Colby's model:

1. By capturing a person's belief structures we can control him or her
2. Human minds are combinations of infantile beliefs and emotional patterns
3. Humans' minds can be simulated by a computerized system
4. Through such systems, we can learn how to "program" and control people

  If you discuss these implications of Colby's accomplishments, people usually ask:

1. Don't humans change too much to be controllable?
   • Answer: A sophisticated computerized personality simulation system would include changes in its profile of the person
     
     
2. How could someone control my behavior, I don't even know what my beliefs are myself?
   • Answer: An AI knowledge engineer can capture the major elements of your personality, including the fact that you may not know what you believe.
     
     

  In 1950, a British computer scientist, by the name of Alan Turing, had devised a test to prove whether a computer system displayed intelligence or not. He called it the Turing Indistinguishability Test:

  Place a computer system in one room and a person in another. If the input/output sequence from each room is indistinguishable, then the computer system is intelligent.

  In 1971 an AI system developed by Kenneth Colby passed the Turing Test. Members of the American Psychiatric Association could not distinguish between dialogue with actual mildly paranoid patients and dialogue with Colby's system.

  Few people today, including AI researchers, realize that Colby's system passed the Turing Indistinguishibiligy Test, proving that his system contained demonstratable intelligence.

   And even more significant, few today realize that Colby's system - and current systems based on the same principles - can predict and CONTROL human behavior.