JLong

Architect, Enterprise Solutions @vml_global

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

A mathematician coined the term "artificial intelligence" in 1955, built the language that dominated AI research for 30 years, and predicted cloud computing 40 years before AWS existed and almost nobody outside the field knows his name.

His name was John McCarthy.

He was born in Boston in 1927, earned his PhD in mathematics from Princeton in 1951, and spent the next 55 years working on a single question that most of his peers considered either impossible or insane.

Can a machine think?

In the summer of 1955, McCarthy sat down and wrote a two-page proposal for a workshop at Dartmouth College. The proposal opened with one sentence that changed everything: "every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it."

He needed a name for the field he was proposing. He chose "artificial intelligence." Before that document, no such field existed. After it, every researcher working on thinking machines had a name for what they were doing, a home discipline to publish in, and a founding document to point to. McCarthy did not just contribute to AI. He created the container it lives in.

The Dartmouth Conference ran for eight weeks in the summer of 1956. It was the moment AI became a real scientific discipline.

McCarthy kept building.

In 1958 he invented LISP, the second oldest high-level programming language still in use today, older only than FORTRAN by one year. LISP was designed for a specific purpose: symbolic reasoning. It could manipulate ideas, not just numbers.

It became the language every serious AI researcher wrote in for the next three decades. From 1958 through the late 1980s, if you were working on AI, you were almost certainly working in LISP.

Inside LISP he invented garbage collection in 1959, the technique that automatically frees up memory a program no longer needs. Java uses it. Python uses it. JavaScript uses it. Every modern language that manages memory automatically is using the idea McCarthy worked out while building LISP.

In 1961 he stood at a centennial celebration at MIT and said something that everyone in the room thought was science fiction. He proposed that computing would one day be delivered as a public utility, the same way electricity or water is delivered to a home. You would not own the computer. You would pay for access to it over a network.

AWS launched in 2006. Azure launched in 2010. Google Cloud launched in 2011. What McCarthy described in 1961 is now a trillion-dollar industry. He was 45 years early.

In 1962 he founded the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, SAIL, which became one of the most important research centers in the history of the field. The researchers who trained there shaped the next 40 years of AI.

He won the Turing Award in 1971. The National Medal of Science in 1990. The Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2003.

He retired from Stanford in 2000. He died on October 24, 2011, at his home in Stanford, California. He was 84.

The researchers at OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic building the models you use today are working in a field McCarthy named in 1955, using memory management he invented in 1959, inside an industry structure he predicted in 1961, toward a goal he spent his entire career insisting was not only possible but inevitable.

He was right about all of it.

He just did not live to see the part where the rest of the world finally believed him.

[JLong @jlongvml]

.@MicahLaCerte has spent his life as a world champion and a transformation coach, but his biggest win wasn't on a stage or in a gym—it was breaking free from the strongholds of his own past. Let’s get this to #1

Grab your copy now: https://t.co/Xw7RHjP42V

#TheBreaker

[JLong @jlongvml]

Check out my Gig on Fiverr: perform advanced domain reconnaissance and dns vulnerability reporting https://t.co/ZK7t2nG1ZE

[ArbitEngine @ArbitEngine]

https://t.co/zEwEIof20j

Get the FREE e-book today

#ArbitEngine
#CryptoMillionaireBlueprint

[VMLY&R @VMLYR]

Kids have fun in Tennessee. And we can prove it… with science. We’re thrilled to bring home a gold lion with @TNVacation for Laugh Tracker! Check out the work: https://t.co/ZuFfgx9oZn @Cannes_Lions #CannesLions2021

[JLong @jlongvml]

@TheJordanRules_ This is a pretty awesome idea!

[KC Bier Co. 🍻🥨 @KCBierCo]

Thanks to @CraftBeerBrew for having our founder Steve Holle & head brewer Karlton Graham on their podcast to discuss the great lengths to which we go to create authentic German lagers! Link: https://t.co/cd1cMb7oif. @KCBierDog @PapaKlager

[JLong @jlongvml]

It's Ironman! Lol

[Tai Lopez @tailopez]

This may be the greatest piece of news of 2020 - the jet pack guy passed the plane at 3,000 feet altitude. Maybe the guy lost control of the jet pack???

https://t.co/TCxDZ95yQJ

[JLong @jlongvml]

I just published Notes from a developer — Darker Sky Android App https://t.co/DCOXonaZ0J

[JLong @jlongvml]

I don't understand the media's response to Esper speaking out. Seems level headed and stands up for what he believes. Maybe he should run for president!

[Luis von Ahn @LuisvonAhn]

I came to the US and instead of taking American jobs, I helped create jobs and billions of dollars in value. Using the virus to stop the Green Card process will hurt companies like @duolingo. We’ll have to open offices and move jobs outside the US because of this. 🙄

[JLong @jlongvml]

Notes From a Developer: Export and Link After Installing OpenSSL https://t.co/S7Pvalzxk2

[JLong @jlongvml]

I just published Notes from a Developer — Spawning a Thread and Retrieving Results https://t.co/q50hUXI7B1 leave a comment to help me improve it!

[Jason Schlosser @castlemn4j]

If it hasn’t been made clear yet you’re failing if you’re only focused on Buy #AdobeSummit

[JLong @jlongvml]

@adazlian Sorry buddy! I live by Riverside but we can always catch up in Dearborn... Just saying!

[Noor Warsia @NFWarsia]

'You are all such nerds', 'they still got photoshop!?' Leslie Jones is sure making it interesting for Steve Hammond #AdobeSummit #adobesummit2018

[Bryan Stopp @StoppThinking]

Its happening. Tomorrow and Thursday; #HeadlessAEM lab at #adobesummit2018

[Jason Schlosser @castlemn4j]

An Individual Consumer can be identified as a Customer, Member, Visitor, or Cookie. 4 different "customers" are all actually the same individual. #AdobeSummit #adobesummit2018 #WeAreVML

[JLong @jlongvml]

I just registered for Google Code Jam! See https://t.co/2xXEVQ3uuu for more information #CodeJam2017