Professor John McCarthy
Father of AI

Articles

The Inversion of Functions Defined by Turing Machines

This paper introduced the notion of well-defined problem, but I became convinced that inverting computable functions in general is not a feasible way of doing AI.

Inversion of Functions Defined by Turing Machines was included in Automata Studies edited by Claude Shannon and myself and published by Princeton University Press in 1956.

It introduced the notion of well-defined problem, but I became convinced that inverting computable functions in general is not a feasible way of doing AI.

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Citation for this paper

@incollection{McC56,
	author = {McCarthy, John},
	title = {The Inversion of Functions Defined by Turing Machines},
	booktitle = {Automata Studies, Annals of Mathematical Studies},
	number =34,
	editor = {C.E. Shannon, J. McCarthy},
	publisher = {Princeton University Press},
	pages = {177--181},
	year = 1956
}