Writing

              A rare occasion of boredom had swept over Flynn the past couple of weeks while he waited for the repair shop to get back to him about his job application. The beginning of summer brought with it a confusing shock of laziness. Was it Monday or Tuesday? Heck, it could have been Friday. He didn’t feel like lifting a limb in his air conditioned living room, never mind carry the plywood out back, to where his father was repairing a rotting fence on the woods side of the yard. Speaking of which, the garage door groaned. His father was back. Flynn rolled off the couch to avoid the predictable lecture that his father would surely give him if he saw him sitting inside on a nice day. 

“Get your lazy ass off the sofa and do something! Why hasn’t the repair shop gotten back to you yet!? Did you even apply? I swear boy, if you been tricking me about this new job as a way to loaf around the house…” Flynn kicked open the torn screen door to the back yard and slipped around the wood splintered, paint chipped, white wall of his house, where he was out of sight for the time being. The wall of humidity made time seem to slow down. Each breath required twice as much effort and was twice as long. He huffed his way to the front driveway before attempting to dash across the baking dirt road that smelled of manure. The words seared into his back like a laser. 

“I like the hustle. Get that wood out back for me, eh?” Flynn awkwardly stumbled, trying to play it off as if he had been heading for the wood stack on the side of the road all along. Surely he was stuck here for the entire afternoon now. He slid his nimble fingers under the stack of unruly wood, the back of his hand grazing the dry grass; the front of his hand welcoming dozens of splinters. It didn’t matter much to him. His hands were like rough leather from doing this a hundred times. Each time he asked “Why not just hire a fence repair company to save us the trouble,” his father got increasingly angry with the same response. 

“A man’s got to make use of his hands to be a man. Hard work teaches discipline. You can’t gamble on other people doing things for you.” Flynn tossed the wood next to the last section of rotting fence and stared off into the woods as his father made measurements with a long rusting ruler. 

“God dammit. I knew these planks were gonna be too short! The Darn employee wouldn’t let me take the longer ones because they were ‘reserved for industrial purposes.’ I’ll give her a piece of my mind.” He stopped off towards his maroon F100 Ford truck in the front yard and slammed the uneven door three times before it finally shut. As he drove off, a dust cloud came at Flynn like a sandstorm. He held his breath and retreated towards the living room with watering eyes. Bless that employee at the hardware store! It would take his father at least an hour to get back to the store, god knows how long to finish arguing about the wood length, and another hour to drive home! Flynn took a long exhale and threw his arms over his head in a big stretch. He reclaimed his throne on the sofa and reached for the TV remote on the ottoman. It was just out of reach. He folded his back to extend an extra half inch. If he could just reach a little further… 

Flynn leaned back and sighed in frustration. His father’s words began to flood his thoughts. Perhaps he had a point. What kind of a man sits inside on a nice day? What kind of a man slumps down on the sofa the second he has no obligations? What kind of a man can’t stand up to grab a TV remote? Flynn sprung up from the coach, grabbed the remote, and threw it out the backdoor as hard as he could all in one motion. It was about time that the repair shop got off their lazy ass and called him back! What kind of a business leaves an applicant waiting for two weeks? I’ll give them a piece of my mind, he thought. The coat hanger almost tipped as he snatched his sunhat and slammed the front door behind him. A cloud of dust sent him into a coughing fit as he marched off cursing. Kicking small stones down the road seemed to ease his anger. How had he been such a fool? Everyday he knew his father was going to scold him and every day he did nothing about it! He just sat on the coach and hoped that there would somehow be a different outcome than the day before. What kind of a sad excuse is “the repair shop hasn’t reached back to me?” He began to laugh at his own stupidity like a maniac. A Robin stooped on a low crabapple tree was staring at him, as if it were judging this strange behavior. Flynn addressed it like a human. “What are you looking at, huh?” It quickly vanished over a wooden fence in terror. 

Flynn began to lose track of time. Had it been fifteen minutes, five minutes, ten minutes? The heat made it feel like ten hours. He at least knew that he was more than fifteen minutes out from town. There were no signs of city hustle and bustle, and only a few cars had passed by the whole time. As the minutes rolled by, the suspicion that he had somehow taken a wrong turn creeped in. Perhaps in his anger he had foolishly turned left at the Woodward Valley juncture. While considering this possibility, he continued to walk; even faster. It was an act of denial. He couldn’t have taken a wrong turn! It would be at least fifteen minutes before he got back to the fork in the road and another thirty to get to town. By that time, he might as well be a pile of cow bones from a Western movie! To his great surprise, two trucks roared past him and swerved onto a narrow sideroad with young brush invading the edges. This gave him a glint of hope; but not that he was heading towards town. It was a different kind of hope. It could be described more like a kind of curiosity. There hadn’t been a house for a good amount of time. This drove Flynn’s curiosity further and made his throat feel a little drier. Where were those trucks headed!? The heat fully controlled his judgment, as he peered down the gravel road and completely forgot why he was out walking in the first place. He started down the side road without consideration of the increasing distance he was leaving himself on the way back home. 

Flynn had only walked so far that he could still see the entrance of the road when a cheer echoed between the trees. He stopped and slapped his face to make sure that he wasn’t hallucinating. Sure enough, another cheer came his way. This time it was even louder. After another minute, the cheering became a constant noise with no breaks. 

Flynn took off into a jog at the prospect of civilization and soon found himself in a gravel parking lot, full with at least one hundred cars! Past the lot, there was a line of ten grown adults wearing jeans and leather boots. A couple even completed the cowboy look with a classic cowboy hat. As he approached, many of them gave him a suspicious side eye but didn’t speak. A short man at the front of the line stood at a small wooden gate, collecting a stack of cash from each person while yelling “NEXT” unnecessarily loud. His hollering was soon drowned out by the crowd noise coming from inside the gate. Flynn scrambled to search his pant pockets. Left pocket; empty. Right pocket; empty. Then, his face lit up with a proud smile. For the first time all day he complimented himself inside his head, and reached into his boot, pulling out his emergency fifty dollar bill. He waved it in the wind arrogantly as he approached the toll. The little man smirked.

 “You should know better than this boy! The entry fee is twenty and you only got one dollar bill. The rule is, I keep the change!” Flynn was too weary and thirsty to argue. The man behind him in line was also impatiently nudging him forwards. 

Flynn's crusty eyes adjusted to the glare of the open area he entered into. He now saw why there was a cheering audience. A group of horses with riders dressed in colorful uniforms organized themselves into a line of stables on a dirt race track. The stands were only on the side of the track that he was standing on. The other side had nothing past it except for the woods. From what he could tell, there were a couple hundred viewers. Between the entrance to the arena and the wooden stands, there was a concession stand selling drinks. Flynn ordered an ice cold lemonade, and reached into his shoe desperately, cursing at the feeling of emptiness. He had already forgotten about the unfortunate instance with the short man at the gate. The concession stand woman bitterly addressed Flynn after he lingered around for a minute. 

“Are you gonna pay for that, kid?” An older gentleman saw the situation unfold and smacked down a five dollar bill on the counter. 

“It’s on me.” The woman grabbed the money, surprised at the generous act. 

“I’ll have a beer.” Flynn turned towards the man and met his extended hand. He was slightly taller than Flynn with stands of gray peeking through his light brown curls. His chin seemed to be growing the beginning of a scruffy beard, and his tan face had wrinkles as if he’d spent many days in the sun when he was younger. “The name’s David Stone, but you can call me ‘lucky d.’” 

“Flynn Turner. Thank you greatly sir. You have no idea how long I've been walking in this furnace of a day.”

“Glad I could help.” A smirk crept across his face. “Maybe you could pay me back if your bets start to come through in the future.” Bets? Is that what this place was?

“I would pay you back if I got the chance, but I didn’t lose my money betting. I actually haven’t bet before. I… Just came to watch.”

“Oh, so you’re a first-timer eh? I promise you’ll be back to bet. There ain't no such thing as ‘just coming to watch’ the second time.” Flynn scoffed to himself. He may have been foolish enough to wander into this place and blow fifty bucks, but he wasn’t foolish enough to throw the rest of his money down a rathole betting on some chance-based horse circus.

A horn blew a low rumble over the audience and the cheering began once again.

David waved Flynn towards the metal stands “Lemme show you what I’m talking about.” As they sat down, David pulled a small pink ticket out of his back pocket and pressed it into his palm. It said only a few words: Kurt Hayes: Projected #11. Flynn peered up towards the start line and counted the horses. There were only twelve in total. As if it weren’t already stupid enough to blow money on this foolish game, the man had bet on an underdog, probably because it was a cheap buy! A shotgun burst at the start line and the horses were off, sending a cloud of parching dust into the front row of the audience, who grumbled and coughed discontentedly. It was a quick race; only a minute or so. As the riders entered their final lap, many members of the audience stood up in angst and anticipation. Flynn glanced to the left and saw that David was still hunched over in his seat, observing closely. His eyes tracked the front of the pack intently, and there was a hint of curious overconfidence lurking beneath his glazed blue iris. 

The race looked pretty tight up until the end, but one horse gained a noticeable edge in the last few yards. The thick air was suddenly overwhelmed with booing, as members of the crowd tore their tickets in half and tossed their arms in anger. A few seconds later, a voice projected through a loudspeaker at the top of the stands. 

Ladies and gentlemen, the final standings are in. Wait, is this correct? It appears racer 11, Kurt Hayes took home the bread on this one. A rustling sound crunched through the speaker as if the mic were being swallowed, and then the voice reappeared in a muffled fashion. Who the hell is this guy? I had all my money on Saddle Sam. He was favored by a long shot! The voice increased back to its original volume. Ladies and gentlemen, I understand your disappointment, but there’s always tomorrow!  I hope to see you back here at five o’clock sharp! Flynn slowly turned to David, his eyes searching for an answer. David kept looking straight ahead, stood up, and casually stretched his arms overhead. “I guess it’s just my day.” 

Flynn followed him down the crowded stairs and over to a small cabin with a customer window on it, still trying to formulate his surprise into a question. David turned in his pink ticket and received a fat wad of cash in return.

As he flipped through the bills counting, Flynn finally asked about the impossible win. 

“Do you know how lucky that was? That’s a one in twelve chance. You‘re even luckier considering that that horse was supposed to lose. Eleven days out of twelve, you’re walking out of here broke as an ax with no handle.”

“I wouldn’t know nothing about that, kid.” David gave another one of his sly smirks. “All I ever seem to do is win.” Flynn continued to question him as he approached the exit. 

“I know there’s some way you gained an edge. What’s the secret?” David stopped in his tracks and sighed loudly. “You want to know the secret kid? Get here real early and look into each of the horses’ eyes. You can tell which one is thinking I’m gonna win today and which ones are thinking get me out of this place. Any horse that wants to win can win. The ranked projections don’t mean nothing to me.” He started forwards again. “I’d get home if I were you. You don’t want the coyotes creeping up on ya in the dark.” Flynn stood in place for a minute, reflecting on David’s advice. It seemed possible that he was telling the truth about his method. Maybe he really did look into the eyes of each horse and just got lucky today. But that didn’t explain his calm reaction to winning on such an underdog bet. He must have won a lot to be that unfazed, and Flynn had taken enough math classes to know that chance didn’t bring that kind of consistency.

 He ran to the gravel parking lot in time to see David hop into a black sedan. As he pulled out, Flynn considered his options desperately. He had to know what was going on with David behind the scenes. Before he could think, Flynn jumped into the back of a pickup truck that had just pulled out from a parking spot. It approached the exit a few seconds before David, so he had to duck below the wall of the trunk in order to stay out of sight. Much to Flynn’s relief, both the pickup truck and David turned left at the end of the narrow road. What was in the other direction anyways? That was where he had been walking towards in his vagabond heatstroke condition earlier. 

Flynn only dared to peek over the wall of the trunk every two minutes or so. The fading daylight played to his advantage. The ride back was much faster in a car than it was walking on a hot day. Within five minutes, they passed by the Woodward Valley juncture that he had taken a wrong turn at earlier. This checkpoint informed Flynn that they were no more than ten minutes away from his house.

 Two minutes after passing the juncture, Flynn quickly peeked over the edge again, sending adrenaline shooting through his veins. He could only see a small glint of light about fifty yards back in the winding road. He waited about a minute until the truck slowed down while passing another car, and took the opportunity to jump down the shrub-covered embankment into the woods. He could only pray that he hadn’t landed in poison ivy. After taking a second to brace for any pain, Flynn stood up slowly. To his surprise, the only injuries he received were a few scratches on his neck and what would surely turn into a fat bruise on his right quad. 

He emerged from the woods, now grateful for the warm summer weather. He wouldn’t last a minute out here on a winter night. His first few waddles down the road reminded him that he had been walking all day. He hadn’t had this much exercise since the last days of spring sports four weeks ago. 

The exhilaration of creeping in the night and the thought of uncovering the truth about David’s impossible luck fueled him to keep up his pace. He began jogging in fear of forgetting exactly where David had pulled over, and in hopes that he might still be able to get home before his father. Flynn checked the driveways of each of the houses he passed, squinting to make out which kind of cars he was looking at. One of the houses had a longer driveway that extended into the woods too far for him to see the end of it. Unwilling to risk missing David’s house, Flynn squat-walked down the driveway like a soldier taking cover. 

The driveway actually split into two houses. The closer one was a simple rectangle with all of the lights shut off, but the more complex shaped one a few yards further away had a couple of dim lights on in the lower left corner of the house. There were no cars parked in the driveway, but there was a small gravel path leading to a separated one-car garage. He would have to glance through the small front window to confirm whether or not there was a black sedan inside. As he army-crawled along the woods, he heard multiple different voices coming from the lit room of the house. One voice would stay active for a couple of seconds, and then the whole group would laugh and cheer together like they were celebrating something. After a few minutes of patient movement, Flynn was out of space to army crawl. He would have to make a dash to the front of the garage in order to peer through the windows. As he was preparing himself for the daunting task, a side door leading to the lit up room spontaneously swung open with a bang. Two skinny but fit looking men exited the house in loud conversation. The one that spoke first was significantly taller. 

“Congratulations! It looks like tomorrow is your day!” The other man chuckled with disapproval. 

“The way I see it,” he paused and pumped his fists rapidly. “WE ALL WIN!.” The other man fed off of his energy.

 “YOU GOT THAT RIGHT.” Instead of walking down the driveway, they circled around the back of the house. It didn’t make any sense. Where were their cars? Where were all the cars of the people he heard laughing inside? This strange situation didn’t distract Flynn from his original mission. After the men disappeared around the corner of the house for a safe amount of time, he bolted to the single car garage with soft steps. Flynn had to stand on his tippy toes to see through the front window, but it was too dark to make out exactly what kind of car was in there. Flynn resorted to his plan B, which was testing the side door. It was locked. He jostled the handle aggressively. 

A sudden trotting noise sent a chill deep down Flynn’s spine. Before he had the chance to retreat towards the cover of the woods, two horses with men mounted on them rode by at a slow pace, crunching gravel as they passed the garage. They held lanterns, and he was able to identify them as the two men who had just been having the strange conversation a minute ago. An even deeper chill radiated down Flynn’s spine as he noticed the colorful helmets they wore.

That night, Flynn hardly slept. He couldn’t stop thinking about the unanswered questions he still had. Was it David Stone’s house? What did the horse racer mean when he said “we all win?” Were there more horse racers inside? He’d have to answer those questions by returning to the races the next day. It didn’t matter if he got home late again. Ironically, his dad was more angry about him lingering around the house in the morning than he was about him coming back late. 

The next afternoon, Flynn arrived at the arena early. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t find David “staring into the horses’ eyes.” When David did arrive, Flynn made sure to time his place in line so that he could see which ticket he was buying. Flynn bought the same blue-colored ticket that he saw David buy, and then also bought a cheap green one. He waited until David was seated to approach him in order to avoid suspicion.

“Hey, look who it is!” David whipped around in surprise.

“Hah! I told you kid. Once you get a taste of the race, you’ll be back.” He noticed Flynn twirling the green ticket between his fingers. “And of course, I see you decided to get in on the action this time. What’s that you got there? Number twelve!?”

“Hey, I was just taking after you. I looked into number twelve’s eyes and saw a burning desire to win.”

“Really? I could have sworn that number eight had that look in his eyes.” David revealed the blue ticket he had been hiding in his pocket.”

“We’ll see, We’ll see.” 

The shotgun blew and the race started identically to the last one. No horse had a clear advantage in the first few laps. Flynn imitated David’s calm demeanor as others in the audience went crazy. In the final quarter of the last lap, one horse exploded ahead of the others. The disappointed audience that didn’t understand math booed again. The man on the loudspeaker didn’t even try to hide his bias this time. 

What has been going on these past few days? Another unexpected underdog just robbed you and I yet again. Racer 8 came away with the lucky win this time!  I’m gonna need a big break soon or else I’ll go bankrupt! 

“You better tune up your horse examination skills soon, Flynn.” David stood up to make his way towards the ticket redemption shack. Flynn scanned the racers, who were leading their horses towards some stables on the far end of the stands. Number 1, number 4, number 9, and aha!; number 8! Flynn exited the stands to get a better view of racer 8. He got so close that a massive security guard stuck a hand in his path. 

“Don’t get no closer than that, son.” Flynn noticed the tip of a blue ticket against his black pants pocket. He tilted his head to see around the guard and get a better look at racer 8. He was exactly the same build as the shorter man he saw at the house last night! He knew David was up to no good! That must have been his house that the racers were meeting at! The whole racing business must have been in on it too! To test this theory, Flynn slipped the blue piece of paper he bought out of his pocket and winked at the security guard. This broke the guards stern and intimidating glare. He raised both eyebrows and took a nervous glance in all directions, before giving Flynn a quick nod of approval. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

 Flynn then rejoiced at the thought of the reward he would receive for betting correctly. He didn’t know exactly how much it was, but he saw David counting as much money as he would make in an entire summer the day that he won! With this in mind, Flynn winded through the disappointed crowds with pride to reach the redemption shack. 

On his way, however, he passed one particular man who instantly ruined his enthusiasm. Subtle tears rolled down his cheeks while holding the hand of his young daughter. This caused Flynn to stop a few yards short of the shack. He hadn’t considered that some people relied on winning this stupid game because of their addiction. He looked down at the blue ticket in his hand with a look of disgust. This scum-bag scam scheme was like reaching into that poor man’s wallet and stealing his money. He was above this, just as he was above sitting inside on a nice summer day. Flynn cringed but also sighed with relief as he released his blue ticket into the wind. Thankfully, it blew away from the crowd. He had to come back to reality. The thought of storming into the repair shop to demand an update on his application re-instilled his sense of pride. As he entered the gravel parking lot, a flash of maroon caught his eye. A maroon ford F100 was pulling out of a parking spot. 

Haikus

Short Memory

Splash, goes my golf ball.

The heron turns, eyes scanning, 

forgetting the fish.

Bravery

In the rodent rush,

squirrels scatter like Irish rain;

chickadees remain.  

Wisdom

Through overlapped chirps,

the mourning dove waits for dark,

where coos can echo. 

Community

Grackles squeal and steal,

but when the hawk hunts any bird,

grackles will protect.

The Tragedy of The Perceptron

Jack Blundin

5/23/24

The recent explosion in revolutionary, open source, AI technologies such as ChatGPT has created a misconception that artificial intelligence (AI) is a new field of study. While the public may be witnessing the most rapid acceleration the field has ever seen, the truth is that our modern conception of AI has existed since the 1950s. What’s even more surprising is that modern neural network architectures, such as the one that ChatGPT was trained on, are based on the technology of the Perceptron, which was invented in 1957 by Cornell researcher Frank Rosenblatt. The structure of neural networks, which attempts to model the brain, was a novel idea in the young field of AI and took a radically different, but intuitive approach to recreating human intelligence. In this day and age, artificial intelligence is defined by these neural networks, which develop a biological sense of knowledge by finding correlations between input data in the process of training. The Perceptron's main competitor soon after its invention was the field of symbolic AI, which would hardly be considered “AI” today because of the absence of training in its algorithms. Advancements in AI in the last 40 years and especially the last two years have shown us that the neural network approach is undoubtedly more successful than the symbolic AI approach when trying to recreate human intelligence. This raises the tragic question of why Perceptron research was overshadowed by symbolic AI research during the AI winter from the 1960s to the 1980s. The most prevalent and justified answer is that Early American neural network researchers overhyped the Perceptron too soon, allowing convincing competitors in the field of symbolic AI to criticize the technology and dominate government funding.

The Perceptron Debate of the 1960s has always been characterized by one historical perspective: every historian and AI researcher attributes the downfall of the Perceptron to the criticism of Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert, symbolic AI researchers who were trying to promote their own field. As time has gone on, however, historians have added new details to this narrative and considered other forces that suppressed the Perceptron and uplifted symbolic AI. In 1988, scientific journalist Edward Rosenfeld highlighted that Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert visited DARPA (The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in person, causing “the Perceptron and other biologically based approaches to… [lose] funding and... [grow] less popular.” This angle considers the personal connections that Minsky and Papert had within DARPA and the resulting bias when it came to funding AI research. In 1996, Historian Paul Edwards considered how symbolic AI researchers won funding from DARPA by developing new programming languages that were “especially suitable for symbol manipulation (such as Newell and Simon's IPL, and McCarthy's LISP).” These coding languages facilitated the process of building symbolic AI algorithms and made the field more appealing to government investors. Also in 1996, Sociologist Mikel Olazaran showed that Minsky and Papert failed to provide a logical explanation for why the Perceptron was a “dead end.” He argued that they focused their criticism on the few shortcomings of the technology while overlooking the promising multilayer Perceptron. In 1998, scientific journalist Jon Guice pointed out “Rosenblatt did not respond publicly” to Minsky and Papert’s criticism, suggesting that he failed to defend the reputation of the Perceptron. Building off of Mikel Olazaran, he also highlighted that the scarcity of AI funding at the time created a more dramatic controversy, where criticism was less scientifically based. 

Recent AI researchers with a modern understanding of neural networks argue that Rosenblatt’s Perceptron was wrongly overlooked. For example, Cornell computer science professor Thorsten Joachims said in 2019 that Rosenblatt’s algorithm is “fundamental to how we’re training deep networks today,” and that  “he was heading on the right track, [and] just needed to do it a million times over.” This paper takes a similar modern stance on the Perceptron Debate of the 1960s, emphasizing that the revolutionary technology was wrongly overlooked. To determine how such a promising technology was overlooked, this paper considers the role of public perception, dramatic competition, bias from Minsky and Papert, and the eventual shift of funding to symbolic AI due to this bias and new programming languages.

“About 40 years ago the path of computer development forked.” Researchers in the young field of AI separated into two primary approaches to recreating human intelligence: neural networks and symbolic AI. symbolic AI, also referred to as “good old-fashioned AI” (GOFAI), attempts to represent knowledge in the form of symbols and uses pre-programmed logic to “interpret” these symbols. The most successful symbolic technology before the field was discontinued in the late 1980s was called Expert Systems, which emulated the decision-making abilities of a human expert in a specific domain. On the other hand, neural networks, inspired by the structure and function of the human brain, capture complex patterns and relationships in data through interconnected layers of nodes and synapses. Neural networks were revolutionary because they introduced the idea that an algorithm could be trained, finding arbitrary, superhuman connections between data. Neural networks generated huge excitement within the AI community in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Marvin Minsky, co-founder of the MIT AI Laboratory (now known as CSAIL) and one of the most influential AI researchers at the time, speculated that there were “thousands of projects” inspired by Rosenblatt’s Perceptron soon after its invention. At the tail end of the 1950s, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) supported Rosenblatt’s research with some portion of their estimated $45,000 budget. By the mid-1960s however, the hype surrounding neural networks had died due to high public expectations that went unfulfilled. This created space for the competing field of symbolic AI, resulting in a controversy called the Perceptron Debate, which lasted into the early 1970s. Symbolic AI emerged from the controversy as the center of AI research for the next twenty years, leading the field into a dead end known as the “AI Winter.” The field of AI did not recover until interest in neural networks resurged in the late 1980s.

The capabilities of the Perceptron were overhyped when it was first announced to the public, generating disapproval from influential researchers within the AI community. The year the Perceptron was invented, Frank Rosenblatt described it as “the first machine which is capable of having an original idea.” This statement exaggerated the Perceptron’s abilities as a model of the human brain and created high expectations for what it would achieve in the next few years. Such a claim attracted the attention of the ONR, who invested in Rosenblatt’s research at the Cornell Aeronautical Lab soon after in 1958. Their partnership was announced at a “press conference held in Washington on [the] 7[th] [of] July 1958. The statements made by Rosenblatt there, which were widely reported in the mass media, heated the controversy” within the AI community. The New York Times said “The Navy revealed the embryo of an electronic computer today that it expects will be able to walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself and be conscious of its existence. Later perceptrons will be able to recognize people and call out their names and instantly translate speech in one language to speech and writing in another language.” While we are reaching all of these benchmarks through neural networks today, those claims were unrealistic for what could be achieved with AI in the 1960s. “Rosenblatt's ‘overclaims’ irritated many people in the AI community, including some of its leaders… Critics accused Rosenblatt of not having respected scientific standards and of having used the media in a partisan way.” Marshall Yovits, who was overseeing the funding of the Perceptron project at the ONR, said that “Many of the people at MIT (referring to the symbolic AI leaders) felt that Rosenblatt primarily wanted to get press coverage … [and] disparaged everything he did.” Of these critics, Marvin Minsky is the most notable. In the late 1950’s he was a supporter of neural networks and participated in the hype by conducting his own research on Perceptrons at Princeton University. However, by 1965, he had become a symbolic AI loyalist because “nothing [had] happened” in the field of neural networks. He explained his perspective change in a 1989 interview: “By 1965 people were getting worried. They were trying to get money to build bigger machines, but they didn't seem to be going anywhere. That's when Papert and I tried to work out the theory of what was possible for [Perceptrons].” In response to the disappointments of neural networks, AI researchers such as Minsky began questioning the potential of the field, and shifted their faith into the alternative of symbolic AI. Rosenblatt’s eagerness to raise support for the Perceptron backfired and undermined the technology. By publicizing his ambitious goals for the Perceptron too soon, he discredited the entire field of AI, creating hostile pushback from other members in the community. As many AI researchers shifted their support towards symbolic AI, they carried an overly critical perspective on the “failure” of the Perceptron, especially when competing for government funding.

While the Perceptron did not accomplish the ambitious goals that it was expected to, research in the field was trending in the right direction. AI researchers who stayed loyal to the neural network approach had begun experimenting with multilayer Perceptron networks, which were essentially “Modern day artificial neural networks that underpin familiar AI like ChatGPT: software versions of the Perceptron, except with substantially more layers.” Prominent AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton, who is now known as the “godfather of AI” “had been working on [multilayer] neural networks since his undergraduate days at Cambridge in the late 1960s…Minsky's criticism of the Perceptron extended only to networks of one ‘layer,’... But Hinton already knew at the time that complex tasks could be carried out if you had…multiple layers.” “With one layer, you could find only simple patterns; with more than one, you could look for patterns of patterns.” In general “Early researchers were aware of the limitations of single-layer systems, and there is no doubt that they saw multilayer nets as the way to go.” “Training multilayer nets was one of the main problems of the early neural-net field,” and was the barrier keeping them from achieving their modern-day success, but researchers such as Hinton were working on the problem. (Hinton, along with David Rumelhart and Ronald Williams eventually developed the solution to training multilayer networks in 1986 with the publication of their famous paper “Learning representations by back-propagating errors.”) AI researchers never expected single-layer networks to yield the human intelligence that Rosenblatt suggested—they were hopeful about multilayer networks as a more accurate model of the brain. Research in the field was moving in the right direction during the Perceptron controversy, it just didn’t move fast enough to meet the ambitious goals that were set out in 1958. Therefore, the technology remained at the center of criticism.

symbolic AI leaders abused their influence by dramaticicing the limits of Perceptrons and disregarding the potential of the technology, in order to win scarce government funding.

Seymour Papert admitted in a 1988 interview that “There was…hostility in the energy behind the research reported” against Perceptrons: “Part of our drive came, as we quite plainly acknowledged in our book, from the fact that funding and research energy were being dissipated on [neural networks].” This hostility towards neural networks was both a reflection of frustration towards Rosenblatt’s overclaims, but more importantly a reflection of the fact that funding available for AI was scarce. In 1969, DARPA was the primary government organization looking to fund AI research, and “there were no other sponsors providing comparable levels of support.” Minsky and Papert were desperate to win over funding from DARPA at the close of the 1960s, so they wrote a book called “Perceptrons,” which highlighted the “shortcomings” of the technology. What is often overlooked, however, is that they failed to provide a logical explanation for why multilayer neural networks, the future of the technology, were not worth funding. A short portion of their book addresses multilayer networks: “The perceptron has shown itself worthy of study… There is no reason to suppose that any of [its] virtues carry over to the many-layered version. Nevertheless, we consider it to be an important research problem to elucidate (or reject) our intuitive judgement that the extension is sterile. Perhaps some powerful convergence theorem will be discovered, or some profound reason for the failure to produce an interesting ‘learning theorem’ for the multilayered machine will be found.” This excerpt from their book is the only place where they criticize multilayer Perceptrons, and it hardly attacks the technology. They speculate with no basis of evidence that continued research into multilayer networks is futile, and that a “learning theorem” to train multilayered networks could “perhaps” fail. The modern successes of neural networks show that this criticism was totally unjustified. Unfortunately, “people used Minsky and Papert’s [‘proofs’] against neural nets without ever going into them,” even though the “limitations” they presented  “were pretty much irrelevant.” Because Minsky and Papert were desperately competing for funding from DARPA, they unjustifiably undermined the Perceptron, dramatizing the technology’s “limits.” Also, while they were visiting DARPA in person, they influenced this biased perspective upon members of the organization, contributing to why they ultimately won funding.

In addition to Minsky and Papert’s influence, symbolic AI was a more appealing investment opportunity for DARPA because of its more practical use in 1960s computers. Back then, commercially available computers were batch processors, meaning while a program was running, nothing else could be executed. Symbolic AI programs contained lots of code and often had human errors that could not be fixed until the entire program had been run unsuccessfully. This led John McCarthy, the “father of AI,” to invent the concept of a time-sharing system, which allowed symbolic AI programmers to save time by sharing the computational power of a single computer, where many people could debug their code live. Time-sharing systems did not support neural networks because their training process cannot be split between many programmers. Additionally, “symbolic AI researchers developed programming languages especially suitable for symbol manipulation (such as Newell and Simon's IPL, and McCarthy's LISP), to simplify the program coding tasks that until then had been done in binary machine language… ARPA's backing of interactive computing [and] time-sharing systems connected symbolic AI with military projects for human-machine interaction… symbolic researchers received strong funding for their scientific objectives of high-level programming, cognitive simulation, heuristics, and the like.” DARPA’s accustomation to time-sharing systems and dynamic coding in military operations biased them towards investing in symbolic AI, which employed similar computational techniques. “At the same time that it was backing symbolic AI explicitly, ARPA decided — also in an explicit manner - not to fund neural-net research.”

“Minsky's book, combined with the perceptron's failure to achieve developers' expectations, squelched the neural-network boom.”

While neural networks have always been a revolutionary technology, various factors caused them to be overlooked for twenty years during the AI winter. Ironically, it was Rosenblatt’s claims that the Perceptron would become revolutionary that ultimately contributed to it being overlooked. He and other neural network enthusiasts such as Geoffrey Hinton knew that single-layered Perceptrons were only the beginning of the effort to recreate human knowledge through modeling the brain, however, critics lacked the same long-term vision. They expected revolutionary accomplishments in too short of a time, and many AI researchers fully denied that AI would be able to “walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself and be conscious of its existence.” When these ambitious goals were not met, AI researchers shifted their support into the dead end of symbolic AI and wrongly convinced powerful government organizations to do the same. This, along with the convenience of running symbolic AI on 1960s computers, took funding away from the brewing multilayer layer Perceptron idea, resulting in the AI winter. “ARPA was able to fund hundreds of thousands, or even millions. Rosenblatt never attracted that kind of money… One can draw the conclusion that if he had had the money he would have made even greater progress.” The loss of interest in neural networks during the AI winter should be considered one of the greatest tragedies in human history. There is no telling how many lives will have been lost because of the 20 year delay in the advancement of neural networks, when considering the importance of AI in modern healthcare. Bill Gates says “Generative AI has… the potential to solve some of the world’s biggest problems, such as climate change, poverty, and disease.”

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Flawed Accuracy

Jack Blundin

11/17/23

Heading into the 18th century, “American” colonists felt like they had a special relationship with England, as Parliament stopped strictly enforcing laws on the colonies under the concept of Salutary Neglect. The colonists’ close affiliations with England, however, ironically caused a notion of separation in the coming decades: After the Seven Years War, Britain found itself in 150 million pounds of debt and turned to the taxation of the colonies to regain economic stability. The colonists viewed this as an act of infringement upon salutary neglect and their status as “British citizens.” Many of the groups oppressed under British rule, however, such as women, slaves, and Native Americans, were not considered British citizens in the first place. This has led to historical debates on whether the revolution was caused by the betrayal of the privileged colonist’s British treatment, or by the rebellion of marginalized groups in colonial society. For example, Gordon S. Wood argued that small infringements on American colonists' British liberties caused an ideological change, in which Americans started to view the British rule as tyranny. On the other hand, Edward Countryman argued that the revolution was the culmination of the oppressive experiences of diverse groups in colonial society. While Countryman accurately considers the oppressions of various groups of people and their different revolutionary motivations, Wood’s argument more accurately describes how privileged colonists were the catalyst for the Revolutionary War.

In his book The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, Published in 1969, Gordon Wood argued on the catalyst of the Revolutionary War from a top-down perspective. He generalized that every American colonist's experience was similar to those of more privileged colonists such as John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, while overlooking the Native American, Black, and female perspectives. By focusing on white male colonists’ contribution to the revolution, he concluded that “The Americans were not an oppressed people,” and that they revolted against the British because their “intensive study of law and politics had made them acutely inquisitive and sensitive about their liberties.” He also argued that their sensitivity to supposed British tyranny was the result of them “being born at a time when the principles of government and freedom were better known than at any time in history,” as many democratic colonial governments were modeled after the Enlightenment ideas in the British constitution. In fact, Wood suggested that the British Constitution inspired the American ideological change in which British rule started to be viewed as tyranny. The colonists “revolted not against the English constitution but on behalf of it.” While Wood’s argument is strengthened by his use of primary sources from privileged colonists, they also speak to his exclusion of the experiences of other social groups. Less privileged groups were not nearly as familiar with the Enlightenment liberties of the British Constitution, nor were they sensitive to “losing” their liberties. Edward Countryman’s argument in The American Revolution more accurately considers the different revolutionary motivations of diverse groups in colonial society. With “millions of people, an ‘ultimate’ or ‘definitive’ explanation” of the revolution  “is impossible.” For example, he argues that the Native American motivation in the revolution had nothing to do with maintaining their “British liberties,” as they were “not citizens or subjects” in the first place. By considering social forces such as Native American relations, racial hierarchy, and gender inequality, Edward Countryman showed how there was more than one revolutionary motivation in colonial society, and that the many revolutionary motivations varied depending on different social groups’ relationships to British rule and institutions. These different motivations, however, do not serve as an explanation for the cause of the American Revolution. While Wood’s argument marginalizes the perspectives of most colonial groups, his accuracy about the rebellion of privileged colonists explains the catalyst of the Revolutionary War.

Countryman accurately argues that various groups in colonial society had different experiences and revolutionary motivations. For example, a poem Phillis Wheatley wrote in 1772 shows a very different colonial perspective than that of white men. “No more, America, in mournful strain/Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain,/No longer shall thou dread the iron chain,/Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand/Had made, and with it meant t’enslave the land.” Wheatley’s poem defies Wood’s argument that “the Americans were not an oppressed people,” Wheatley’s goal with her poem was not to preserve her “liberties” as Wood suggests, but rather to vouch for American independence because it reflected her own desire to be freed from slavery. A runaway slave named Boston King also shared the same motivation to gain liberty, however, his experience was very different from Phillis Wheatley’s. Instead of criticizing the British tyranny, King joined the British army in hopes of earning his freedom. “To escape [a neighboring enslaver’s] cruelty, I determined to go Charles-Town, and throw myself into the hands of the English. They received me readily, and I began to feel the happiness of liberty.” King may have had the same revolutionary motivation as Phillis Wheatley, but his experiences could not be more different. This also defies Wood’s argument that the American experience was “institutionalize[d]” during the revolution and supports Countryman’s point that there is not a “definitive” colonial experience. Women’s motivation in the revolution was similar to that of the slaves but was still very different from privileged white men. In a letter Abigail Adams sent to her husband, John Adams, she leveraged the revolution to gain more rights. “In the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies.” “If particular care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.” Women were another oppressed group in colonial society who had different revolutionary motivations than preserving liberties. Similarly to slaves, women were pushing to gain new liberties and were rebelling against the privileged colonial men more than they were rebelling against British tyranny. The “Oneida Declaration of Neutrality” in 1775 is also a testament to the fact that revolutionary motivations varied based on different social groups in colonial society. “Brothers! Possess your minds in peace respecting us Indians.” “We are unwilling to join one other side in such a contest, for we bear an equal affection to both of you, Old and New-England.” This declaration, written to the governor of Connecticut, shows how some Native American groups chose to stay neutral at the outbreak of the Revolution. As Countryman argued, the experiences and motivations of people in colonial society varied. Slaves, women, Native Americans, and other groups had experiences that differed from those of the privileged white men. In many instances, these groups, especially slaves, were oppressed and were not preserving their British liberties as Wood suggested. While Countryman accurately recognized the different motivations of diverse groups in colonial society, his argument does not serve as an explanation for the cause of the American Revolution. 

Wood overlooked most colonial perspectives, but he very accurately identified the experiences and revolutionary motivation of privileged white men, which catalyzed the war through their use of the media. His idea that the “intensive study of law and politics” made colonists sensitive to tyranny is reflected in Thomas Paine’s “Call for American Independence” in 1776. “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil…” “In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology there were no kings; the consequence of which was, there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion. Holland, without a king hath enjoyed more peace for this last century than any of the monarchical governments in Europe.” Paine’s first idea about government being a “necessary evil” reflects the philosophy of enlightenment thinker Thomas Hobbes. This along with Paine’s admiration of Holland’s more democratic government supports Wood’s argument that privileged white men had become sensitive to tyranny because of their familiarity with Enlightenment ideas, and their familiarity with democratic governments. England’s monarchy at the time provided their citizens with more liberties than most other European countries, yet Paine heavily criticized the concept of a King, and yearned for a completely democratic government. In Wood’s words, he was sensitive to any possibility of oppression and “snuff[ed] the approach of tyranny.” The reason why Wood’s argument better explains the catalyst of the revolution is because white men similar to Paine had much more influential power than any other group in colonial society. In particular, their privileged ability to write and print helped them arouse distaste for British rule. In addition to Thomas Paine’s  “Call for American Independence,” there were many other instances of white men spreading their influence through the media. For example, John Dickinson wrote a call to action to the people of Philadelphia after the Stamp Act was passed. His writing was published in many newspapers. “We have seen the Day on which an Act of Parliament imposing Stamp Duties on the British Colonies in America was appointed to take Effect.” “Your Conduct at this Period must decide the future Fortunes of yourselves and of your Posterity — must decide whether Pennsylvanians from henceforward shall be Freemen or Slaves.” He described the Stamp Act as legislation that would turn Pennsylvanians into “slaves,” which shows the sensitivity among privileged colonists that Wood discussed. Paul Revere’s famous engraving of the Boston Massacre in 1770 was yet another instance of white men using the power of media to evoke patriotism in the colonies. He depicted the British soldiers as if they were “enjoying the violence,” and drew them in an organized military stance to make them appear as if they were the “aggressors.” Through the use of media, privileged white men were able to spread their patriotism to large audiences and grow revolutionary support.

Wood generalizes every colonist’s experience and revolutionary motivation to be the same as those of privileged white males. Countryman, however, accurately disproves his argument by considering the various experiences and revolutionary motivations of diverse groups. Whether it be Slaves fighting for freedom from their colonial masters, women advocating for their rights, Native Americans strategically remaining neutral at the outbreak of the war, or privileged white men trying to preserve their “British” treatment, different groups, and even different individuals, often had varying motivations for their choices in the revolution. There is, however, a degree of truth in Wood’s argument. He identified privileged white men's motivation to preserve their liberties, and the political experiences that made them sensitive to oppression. While Countryman’s argument is a more accurate representation of the social forces in the colonies, Wood’s argument more accurately describes how privileged colonists' influence was the catalyst for the Revolutionary War. These two arguments reveal the bias in our understanding of the American Revolution. The abundance of writing from privileged colonists allows us to see how they impacted the push for revolution, while the absence of preserved ideas from marginalized groups creates gaps in our knowledge. The lack of information on the impact of marginalized groups can be seen in Countryman’s argument — at many points, he recognizes the need to consider marginalized contributions to the revolution, but he does not provide much information on what the contributions were.  

       Bibliography:

Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March – 5 April 1776 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive. Massachusetts Historical Society.

Countryman, Edward. The American Revolution, Revised edition. New York City: Hill and Wang, 2004.

American archives: consisting of a collection of authentic records, state papers, debates, and letters and other notices of public affairs, the whole forming a documentary history of the origin and progress of the North American colonies; of the causes and accomplishment of the American revolution; and of the Constitution of government for the United States, to the final ratification thereof…, Peter Force, ed. (Washington: M. St. Claire Clark and Peter Force, 1837), 1116-1117. 

DICKINSON, JOHN. Broadside, Philadelphia, November 1765, reprinted in several newspapers, EXCERPTS, Located in MAKING THE REVOLUTION: AMERICA, 1763-1791 PRIMARY SOURCE COLLECTION, America in Class. 

King, Boston, “Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, a Black Preacher,” The Methodist Magazine (March 1798, April 1798).

Paine, Thomas, Common Sense (Project Gutenberg EBook: June 2008)

Revere, Paul, The Bloody Massacre in King-Street, March 5, 1770. Boston, 1770. (Gilder Lehrman Collection).

Wheatley, Phillis. To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth, in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, London, 1773, page 73. (Gilder Lehrman Collection)

Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969.