Man-Machine Co-operation on a Learning Task

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is the science of mechanising interesting brain-work. Most people would say that the really interesting kind of brain-work is not so much generating a solution to a particular problem but rather building a strategy for obtaining solutions in general. The use of computers in business is still largely at the level of helping the clerk, or at a more advanced stage, the designer. To be of significant help to the manager and long-range planner the computing systems of tomorrow will have to go beyond the manufacture of results to the synthesis of strategies. We further believe that the processes of strategy-building will be carried out by interactive man-machine systems, in which each partner has something to contribute which the other finds hard to provide. It is the long-term aim of our Department to produce an “intelligent machine” capable of interacting with man in this way.