MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
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MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (also CSAIL) is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Housed within the Stata Center, CSAIL is the largest on-campus laboratory as measured by research scope and membership.
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[edit] Research activities
CSAIL's research activities are organized around a number of semi-autonomous research groups, each of which is headed by one or more professors or research scientists. These groups are divided up into seven general areas of research:
- Artificial Intelligence
- Computational biology
- Graphics and Vision
- Language and Learning
- Theory of computation
- Robotics
- Systems (includes computer architecture, databases, distributed systems, networks and networked systems, operating systems, programming methodology, and software engineering among others)
In addition, CSAIL hosts the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
[edit] History
Computing research at MIT began with Vannevar Bush's research into a differential analyzer and Claude Shannon's electronic Boolean algebra in the 1930s, the wartime Radiation Laboratory, the post-war Project Whirlwind and Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and Lincoln Laboratory's SAGE in the early 1950s.
Research at MIT in the field of artificial intelligence began in 1959.[citation needed]
On July 1, 1963, Project MAC (the Project on Mathematics and Computation, later backronymed to Multiple Access Computer, Machine Aided Cognitions, or Man and Computer) was launched with a $2 million grant from DARPA and headed by Robert Fano of RLE. Fano made the decision to designate MAC as a "project" rather than a "laboratory" since it placed fewer restrictions on recruiting researchers from other MIT departments.[citation needed]
An "AI Group" including Marvin Minsky (the director), John McCarthy (who invented Lisp) and a talented community of computer programmers was incorporated into the newly-formed Project MAC. It was interested principally in the problems of vision, mechanical motion and manipulation, and language, which they view as the keys to more intelligent machines. In the 1950s - 1970s the AI Group shared a computer room with a computer (initially a PDP-6, and later a PDP-10) for which they built a time-sharing operating system called ITS.[citation needed]
The early Project MAC community included Fano, Fernando J. Corbató, Marvin Minsky, J.C.R. Licklider, and a community of computer programmers and enthusiasts among others who drew their inspiration from former colleague John McCarthy. These founders envisioned the creation of a computer utility whose computational power would be as reliable as an electric utility. To this end, Corbató brought the first computer time-sharing system, CTSS, with him from the MIT Computation Center, using the DARPA funding to purchase an IBM 7094 for research use. One of the early focuses of Project MAC would be the development of a successor to CTSS, Multics, which was to be the first high availability computer system, developed as a part of an industry consortium including General Electric and Bell Laboratories.
Project MAC's contemporaries included Project Genie at Berkeley, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and (somewhat later) USC's Information Sciences Institute.
In 1966, Scientific American featured Project MAC in the September thematic issue devoted computer science, which was later published in book form. At the time, the system was described as having approximately 100 TTY terminals, mostly on campus but with a few in private homes. Only 30 users could be logged in at the same time. Talented programmers such as Richard Stallman, who used TECO to write EMACS, flourished in the AI Lab in the 1970s.
In the late 1960s, the artificial intelligence group sought more space, but Licklider, the project director, resisted.[citation needed] In 1970, Minsky split his group into a separate entity called the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, that would be entitled to its own space separate from Project MAC. The AI Lab became one of the most influential and accomplished in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.
Those researchers who did not join the smaller AI Lab formed the Laboratory for Computer Science and continue their research into operating systems, programming languages, distributed systems, and the theory of computation. Two professors, Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, chose to remain neutral – their group was referred to variously as Switzerland and Project MAC for the next 30 years.[citation needed]
On the fortieth anniversary of Project MAC's establishment, July 1, 2003, LCS re-merged with the AI Lab to form the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or CSAIL. This merger created the largest laboratory (over 600 personnel) on the MIT campus and was regarded as a reuniting of the diversified elements of Project MAC.
[edit] Directors of the AI Lab
- Marvin Minsky, 1970-1972
- Patrick Winston, 1972-1997
- Rodney Brooks, 1997-2003
[edit] Notable researchers
(Including members and alumni of CSAIL's predecessor labs.)
- MacArthur Fellows Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Erik Demaine, Daniela L. Rus, Peter Shor and Richard Stallman
- Turing Award recipients Leonard M. Adleman, Fernando J. Corbato, Butler W. Lampson, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Ronald L. Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Barbara Liskov
- Rolf Nevanlinna Prize recipients Madhu Sudan, Peter Shor
- Gödel Prize Recipients Shafi Goldwasser (two-time recipient), Silvio Micali, Charles Rackoff, Johan Håstad, Peter Shor, and Madhu Sudan
- Grace Murray Hopper Award recipients Robert Metcalfe, Shafi Goldwasser, Guy L. Steele, and W. Daniel Hillis
- Textbook authors Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Patrick Winston, Ronald L. Rivest and Clifford Stein
- David D. Clark, former chief protocol architect for the Internet, and co-author with Jerome H. Saltzer (also a CSAIL member) and David P. Reed of the influential paper "End-to-End Arguments in Systems Design" (see End-to-end principle)
- Seymour Papert, inventor of the Logo programming language
- Joseph Weizenbaum, creator of the ELIZA computer-simulated therapist
- Bob Frankston, developer (with Harvard MBA Dan Bricklin) of VisiCalc, the first computer spreadsheet
[edit] Project MAC
Project MAC (the MIT Project on Mathematics and Computation), later the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS), was a research laboratory at MIT. Project MAC would become famous for groundbreaking research in operating systems, artificial intelligence, and the theory of computation. Its contemporaries included Project Genie at Berkeley, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and (somewhat later) USC's Information Sciences Institute.
The acronym "MAC" is glossed variously as Multiple Access Computer, Machine Aided Cognition, Man And Computer, and in later years Minsky Against Corby (a joke based on two of the principal figures of two semi-competing research groups in the lab).
Project MAC was principally funded by DARPA and later the National Science Foundation. Project MAC was started on July 1, 1963 with initial funding from a two million dollar DARPA grant. Project MAC's original director was Robert Fano of MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). Fano decided to call MAC a "project" rather than a "laboratory" for reasons of internal MIT politics—if MAC had been called a laboratory, then it would have been more difficult to raid other MIT departments for research staff. The program manager responsible for the DARPA grant was J.C.R. Licklider, who had previously been at MIT conducting research in RLE, and would later succeed Fano as director of Project MAC.
Project MAC's founders—Fano, Fernando J. Corbató, and Marvin Minsky with inspiration from former colleague John McCarthy), among others—envisioned the creation of a computer utility, which would be as reliable a source of computational power as the electric utility was a source of electrical power. To this end, Corbató brought the first computer time-sharing system, CTSS, with him from the MIT Computation Center, using the DARPA funding to purchase an IBM 7094 for research use. One of the early focuses of Project MAC would be the development of a successor to CTSS, Multics, which was to be the first high availability computer system, developed as a part of an industry consortium including General Electric and Bell Laboratories.
In 1966, Scientific American featured Project MAC in the September thematic issue devoted to computer science, which was later published in book form. At the time, the system was described as having approximately 100 TTY terminals, mostly on campus but with a few in private homes. Only 30 users could be logged in at the same time.
In the late 1960s, Minsky's artificial intelligence group was seeking more space, and was unable to get satisfaction from project director Licklider. University space-allocation politics being what it is, Minsky found that although Project MAC as a single entity could not get the additional space he wanted, he could split off to form his own lab and then be entitled to more office space. As a result, the MIT AI Lab was formed in 1970, and many of Minsky's AI colleagues left Project MAC to join him in the new lab, while most of the remaining members went on to form the Laboratory for Computer Science. Two professors, Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, chose to remain neutral—their group was referred to variously as Switzerland and Project MAC for the next 30 years, until the two labs ultimately re-merged as CSAIL.
In later technical work, the Lisp dialect Maclisp was developed by Project MAC.
The portion of Project MAC that was renamed the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS), went on to do further ground-breaking work, including a significant role in the development of the Internet. It was generally significantly larger but less glamorous than the AI lab.
On the fortieth anniversary of Project MAC's establishment, July 1, 2003, LCS re-merged with the AI Lab to form the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or CSAIL. This merger created the largest laboratory (over 600 personnel) on the MIT campus and was regarded as a reuniting of the diversified elements of Project MAC.
[edit] Notable alumni
Several Project MAC alumni went on to further revolutionize the computer industry.
- Bob Metcalfe, who went on to invent Ethernet at Xerox PARC, and later founded 3COM.
- Bob Frankston, who wrote VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet (renting computer time on the MIT Multics system to assemble early prototypes).
[edit] Directors of Project MAC
- Robert Fano, 1963-1968
- J.C.R. Licklider, 1968-1971
- Edward Fredkin, 1971-1974
- Michael L Dertouzos, 1974-1975
[edit] Directors of the Laboratory for Computer Science
- Michael L Dertouzos, 1975-2001
- Victor Zue, 2001-2003
[edit] Directors of CSAIL
- Rodney Brooks, 2003-2007
- Victor Zue, 2007-present
[edit] Further reading
- CSAIL's official Web page
- "A Marriage of Convenience: The Founding of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory", Chious et al. - includes important information on the Incompatible Timesharing System
- Documentary film with and about Joseph Weizenbaum ( "Weizenbaum. Rebel at Work." )
- Garfinkel, Simson; Hal Abelson, ed. (1999). Architects of the Information Society: Thirty-Five Years of the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-07196-7.
- Simson L. Garfinkel, Architects of the Information Society, Harold Abelson, ed. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001). ISBN 0-262-07196-7.
[edit] References
[edit] See also
- Project MAC for more details of the split
- Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
- History of operating systems
[edit] External links
- The webpage for the successor of the AI Lab, CSAIL.
- Oral history interview with Robert M. Fano. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
- Oral history interview with Lawrence G. Roberts. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
- Oral history interview with J. C. R. Licklider. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
- Oral history interview with Marvin L. Minsky. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
- Oral history interview with Terry Allen Winograd. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
- Oral history interview with Wesley Clark. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
- "A Marriage of Convenience: The Founding of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory", Chious et al. - includes important information on the Incompatible Timesharing System.
- Oral history interviews with Project MAC participants, Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Participants include Robert M. Fano and Fernando J. Corbató.
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