Pandemonium

When John Milton named the capital of Hell in Paradise Lost, he turned to the Greek word ‘pandæmonium’ – meaning ‘all the little spirits’ – and reinterpreted it as the place of swarming demons. Little did he know that it would inspire a 25-year-old researcher at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory to create the first model of machine learning software almost 300 years later. Oliver Selfridge was experimenting in the 1950s with how to teach a computer to learn when he was struck by Milton’s image of ‘a bunch of these demons shrieking up the hierarchy’ – technically, bottom-up learning with feedback loops: AI.

— Wayne Visser

From Purpose Inspired: Reflections on Conscious Living, Volume 2. Buy on Lulu ↗