Feynman on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, with Updates

Abstract

I present my recollections of Richard Feynman's mid-1980s interest in artificial intelligence and neural networks, set in the technical context of the physics-related approaches to neural networks of that time. I attempt to evaluate his ideas in the light of the substantial advances in the field since then, and vice versa. There are aspects of Feynman's interests that I think have been largely achieved and others that remain excitingly open, notably in computational science, and potentially including the revival of symbolic methods therein.

17 pages. To appear in Feynman Lectures on Computation, 2nd edition, published by Taylor & Francis Group, edited by Anthony J. G. Hey