Aswin VN

My PhD is on AI pioneer Donald Michie, who almost single-handedly established machine intelligence research in the UK.

Donald Michie was a codebreaker at Bletchley Park (BP) during the second world war, a geneticist after the war, and later an artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer who ended up founding the first department for machine intelligence in the UK. He made significant contributions to all three fields that he worked in and was instrumental in institutionalising AI research in the UK, and abroad. My thesis will provide the first detailed academic exploration of Michie’s career starting from his time as a codebreaker at BP, where he befriended Alan Turing, and further exploring his post-war career as a molecular biologist who made pathbreaking contributions to the science of embryology along with his then wife and research partner Anne McLaren.

However, the bulk of my study will look at Michie’s career in machine intelligence research, beginning with his Experimental Programming Unit at University of Edinburgh in 1963, which eventually led to the formation of the Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception in 1966—the first of its kind in the world. Three main questions will guide this study: How did Michie’s war-time experience at BP and his friendship with Turing shape his research interests in machine intelligence? How did the changing political, institutional and economic circumstances in the UK, as well as his own political outlook, shape Michie’s career in AI? And what role did Michie play in establishing AI as a research field in the UK and abroad? In that regard, I will explore the ups and downs of his multi-disciplinary research career, starting from his recruitment as a codebreaker to BP in 1942 and ending with the founding of Human Computer Learning Foundation (HCLF) in 1995, at the twilight of his career. I will situate various phases of Michie’s AI research within the changing institutional, political and industrial policy circumstances in the UK. I hope to show that Michie’s codebreaking experience at BP and his discussions with Turing during that time were foundational in shaping his general interest in machine intelligence as well as his particular research interest in machines that could play games, especially chess. I will also demonstrate how the changing science and technology policy in the UK shaped Michie’s quest to institutionalise machine intelligence research. Moreover, I will explore how Michie’s Marxist ideals and entrepreneurial outlook towards technology shaped his choices throughout his career.