Brought to you by:

By: Nick Hankins

Wiener was an internationally recognized mathematician born in Columbia, Missouri in 1894. He would go on to win the Bocher Memorial prize in 1933, the National Medal of Science in 1963, and many book awards. As a child prodigy, he graduated with a degree in mathematics from Tufts College when he was 14. With a dissertation focused on math logic, he would go on to get his Ph.D. at Harvard when he was 18.[1] Wiener continued to study math, traveling to Europe to do so. When he returned to the US, WWI had just started. He attempted to enlist, but was denied because of his poor eyesight. At this moment, Wiener decided to explore many different career opportunities. He taught philosophy courses at Harvard, worked some for the General Electric Company, and even became a staff writer for Encyclopedia Americana.[2]

During WWII, Wiener spent most of his time on the automatic firing of anti-aircraft guns. It was this work that inspired one of Wiener’s most impactful contributions to the field of AI: cybernetics. Cybernetics is the science behind automatic control systems and communications in machines and living things. Related to this field, Wiener was the first to formalize the concept of feedback – where previous outputs are routed back into a system as inputs. Wiener said, “The nervous system and the automatic machine are fundamentally alike in that they are devices, which make decisions on the basis of decisions they made in the past.”[3] To gain a better understanding of the decision making and cybernetics in machines, Wiener spent time learning about cognitive science within living things. Additionally, since cybernetics is so closely related to robotics and automated machines, Wiener often crafted ideas and theories about AI. In 1948, Wiener published his book titled