Cognition, Computers, and Car Bombs: How Yale Prepared Me for the 90's

Abstract

early writings on artificial intelligence (Feigenbaum and Feldman 1963). It was here that I learned about a community of people who were trying to unravel the mysteries of human cognition by playing around with computers. This seemed a lot more interesting than Riemannian manifolds and Hausdorff spaces, or maybe I was just getting tired of all that time on the subway. One way or another, I decided to apply to a graduate program in computer science just in case there was some stronger connection between FORTRAN and human cognition than I had previously suspected. When Yale accepted me, I decided to throw all caution to the wind and trust the admissions committee. I packed up my basenji and set out for Yale in the summer of 1974 with a sense of grand adventure. I was moving toward light and truth, and my very first full screen text editor. As luck would have it, Professor Roger Schank, a specialist in artificial intelligence (AI) from Stanford, was also moving to Yale that same summer.