What is science for? The Lighthill report on artificial intelligence reinterpreted
Open accessAbstract
This paper uses a case study of a 1970s controversy in artificial-intelligence (AI) research to explore how scientists understand the relationships between research and practical applications. It is part of a project that seeks to map such relationships in order to enable better policy recommendations to be grounded empirically through historical evidence. In 1972 the mathematician James Lighthill submitted a report, published in 1973, on the state of artificial-intelligence research under way in the United Kingdom. The criticisms made in the report have been held to be a major cause behind the dramatic slowing down (subsequently called an 'AI winter') of such research. This paper has two aims, one narrow and one broad. The narrow aim is to inquire into the causes, motivations and content of the Lighthill report. I argue that behind James Lighthill's criticisms of a central part of artificial intelligence was a principle he held throughout his career - that the best research was tightly coupled to practical problem solving. I also show that the Science Research Council provided a preliminary steer to the direction of this apparently independent report. The broader aim of the paper is to map some of the ways that scientists (and in Lighthill's case, a mathematician) have articulated and justified relationships between research and practical, real-world problems, an issue previously identified as central to historical analysis of modern science. The paper therefore offers some deepened historical case studies of the processes identified in Agar's 'working-worlds' model.
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The literature often stops short of critical considerations of the limitations of AI in e-learning, especially regarding adaptability across varied educational contexts.
“Therefore, although the literature has identified the conceptual benefits accruable from AI in e-learning, it often stops short of critical considerations of its limitations, especially regarding the adaptability of AI systems across varied educational contexts [26,27].”
From Leveraging AI in E-Learning: Personalized Learning and Adaptive Assessment through Cognitive Neuropsychology—A Systematic Analysis (2024) · cites this paper as [26]
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Cites
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Research works printed but not linked: 5
- he -remarkably -moved out of the Department of Surgical Sciences and set up his own 'unofficial unit', the Experimental Programming Unit. His lobbying of the government, specifically the DSIR, paid off, and he began to attract large grants, as well as organising a series of Machine Intelligence Workshops. With entrepreneurial skill, Michie by 1966 not only had secured official recognition from the university, in the form of the Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception, but he also pulled in the talents of Richard Gregory (from Cambridge, psychology of perception) and Longuet- Higgins (from Oxford, a very bright theoretical chemist, looking for a new challenge), with the intent of collaborating on building an intelligent robot. Michie also built up an international 'Firbush' network of supporters and collaborators in machine intelligence. Taking its name from Firbush Point on Loch Tay, where Michie hosted a three day meeting of the network, the Firbush newsletters convey a strong sense of excitement over the ambitious research underway by the early 1970s. 40
- Michie had seen a leaked March 1972 version of the Lighthill report (minus two pages, warned his informant, that were 'not being circulated to anyone, since they contain detailed comments on individuals' -almost certainly about Michie himself). 41 His public response, however, came as part of the published paper symposium in 1973. First, unlike the other respondents, he attacked Lighthill's 39
- Alex May, 'Dane Anne Laura Dorinthea McLaren (1927-2007)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/98949. · DOI
- Donald Michie, 'Machine intelligence in the bicycle shed', New Scientist (22 February 1973), pp. 422-423.
- See YouTube and also via Edinburgh's current Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute website http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/events/lighthill1973/. McCarthy's response can be found in the review of the paper symposium, published in Artificial Intelligence (1974) 5, pp. 317-322. 'If we take the [ABC categorisation
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Halkiopoulos, C., & Gkintoni, E. (2024) · Electronics · doi:10.3390/electronics13183762 · Cited by 328 · see citing works
“Therefore, although the literature has identified the conceptual benefits accruable from AI in e-learning, it often stops short of critical considerations of its limitations, especially regarding the adaptability of AI systems across varied educational contexts [26,27].”
Artificial intelligence ethics has a black box problem
Bélisle-Pipon, J.-C., Monteferrante, E., Roy, M.-C., & Couture, V. (2023) · AI & SOCIETY · doi:10.1007/s00146-021-01380-0 · Cited by 85 · see citing works
Nakhle, F., & Harfouche, A. L. (2021) · Patterns · doi:10.1016/j.patter.2021.100323 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
“12 This caused a loss of confidence and henceforth a decline in resources for AI research, 13,14 starting a period known as the AI winter.”
Background
- Authors
- AGAR, J.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- AGAR, JON
- ORCID
- AGAR, JON
- Venue
- The British Journal for the History of Science
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2020-07-10
- Volume
- 53
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 289-310
- ISSN
- 0007-0874 (ISSN-L)
- 1474-001X
- OpenAlex
- W3041097619
- Cited by
- 54
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 23 · 2021: 3
- FWCI
- 38.07
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- The British Journal for the History of Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Queen Mary University of London
- Medical Research Council
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Research, Science, and Academia
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Twentieth Century Scientific Developments
- Keywords
- artificial intelligence, AI winter, research-practice relationship, Science Research Council, science policy, history of artificial intelligence, real-world problem solving
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