Article ID: CBB933179019

Armed Algorithms: Hacking the Real World in Cold War America (2023)

unapi

Histories of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics often overlook how physically crafted structures were crucial to the code that shaped their mutually constitutive evolution. This article explores these relationships by charting how the artificial intelligentsia at MIT and Stanford experimented with “armed algorithms”—robot arms interfaced to computers—in calibrated built environments, called microworlds, during the late 1960s and early 1970s. These manufactured spaces were designed to filter out the noise and recalcitrance of the real world that made robotic experimentation exceedingly difficult. Beyond their laboratory or scientific value, the microworlds also served as positive demonstrations of mutual orientation, which in turn recursively drove the mutual construction of the technoscientific Cold War world. To make their armed algorithms work, therefore, technologists on Route 128 and in Silicon Valley hacked not only their computers but also the physical and social world to push forward the frontiers of AI and robotics.

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Article James Evans; Adrian Johns (2023) Introduction: How and Why to Historicize Algorithmic Cultures. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 1-15). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB933179019/

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Authors & Contributors
Tatarchenko, Ksenia
Akera, Atsushi
Cain, Frank
Donner, Martin
Franchi, Stefano
Geraci, Robert M.
Journals
Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
History and Technology
Journal of Contemporary History
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Perspectives on Science
Publishers
The MIT Press
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT
University of California, Berkeley
Cambridge University Press
MIT Press
Springer Nature
Concepts
Computer science
Cold War
Algorithms
Artificial intelligence
Automata; robotics; cyborgs
Mathematics
People
al-Khwārizmī, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā
Lorenz, Edward
Shaw, Robert
Mori, Masahiro
Nishimura, Makoto
Ishiguro, Hiroshi
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century
Places
United States
Soviet Union
Japan
People's Republic of China
Institutions
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT
International Business Machines Corporation
Princeton University
Stanford University
Lincoln Laboratory
University of California, Santa Cruz
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