Dónal and Ciarán go back, back, back to see how the long history of computing machines connects to the AI revolution we're in now.

Topics in this episode

• How far back does the history of humans building machines to aid our thinking go?
• Why are French weaving machines and alcoholic poet's daughters involved?
• How does the history of computing go through County Cork in the 1800s?
• Who are Turning and Shannon, and why do workplace disagreements leading to new companies fracturing off seem to be a repeating theme?
• What are the key developments in the evolution of computing that allow us to build AI systems now?

Links & Resources

• The Antikythera Mechanism (Wikipedia)
• Information about George Boole's time in Cork (UCC Website)
• Crash Course video on Boolean Logic (YouTube)
• An image of "The Mechanical Turk" (WikiMedia Commons)
• Tom Standage's (2002) The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine
• Information about and images of the Jacquard Loom (Science & Industry Museum)
• The portrait of J.M. Jacquard, woven in silk by his loom, which took 24,000 punch cards to program (WikiMedia Commons)
• Photograph of a young Claude Shannon, juggling on a unicycle (Ray Soni, Photo courtesy of the Shannon family)
• Ray Cavanaugh's (2016) article Claude Shannon: The Juggling Unicyclist Who Pedaled Us Into the Digital Age (Time Magazine)

You can get in touch with us - hello@enoughaboutai.com - where we'd love to hear your questions, comments or suggestions!