[saidajigumi]

Back in the early 90s, my grad AI class referred to AI as the "incredible shrinking field". The class kicked off with a black-and-white newsreel style interview from the 1950's with an MIT professor[1] who says, to eternal breathless infamy, something along the lines of "we'll have machines that can think within five years!"

Part of the challenge is/was the line of thinking "surely if we can solve Hard Problem X, we'll have intelligence!" This turned out to be entirely wrongheaded, since a vast litany of Hard Problems X turned out to have plain old algorithmic solutions.

[1] I keep hoping this shows up online somewhere. It was shot using a machine room as the set, where mid-century modern furniture had been brought in for guest and host!

[shanemhansen]

Maybe in a few years we'll have bridged the gap between computer and machine capabilities. Not by deciding computers think, but by realizing that what humans do is computing.

[ryanhuff]

Was the video titled “The Thinking Machine”?

[saidajigumi]

That indeed looks like it, thanks. It also looks like old memory mixed up bits and pieces of it; the interview wasn't in fact set in the machine room shots.