[The following blog is distributed with the permission of the author, A. Michael Noll, the person who designed the model of video communications used in 2001 : A Space Odyssey. Read to discover the gentleman who compared AI to natural human studipity!]
THE AI BALLOON
A. Michael Noll
December 17, 2025
© Copyright 2025 AMN
There is nothing “new” about AI – it is simply a repackaging of already existing technologies. Keep calm – keep your money in your purse or pocket. Balloons soar up in the sky – and ultimately pop!
There is much history that seems forgotten – or ignored. In the 1960s, I worked in communication research at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. (Bell Labs) when the term “artificial intelligence” was new and much in vogue. Our executive director, John R. Pierce, thought little of it all and contrasted it with the “natural stupidity” of humans. We did much research in synthetic speech and speech recognition, along with other areas that today seem quite relevant. We even made the computer “sing” and mimic humanmade art.
I recall visiting around the early 1970s, the artificial intelligence laboratory at Stanford University directed by John McCarthy. He was a real genius and advised me while I was in Washington on the staff of the President’s Science Advisor. A student, Raj Reddy, was working on his dissertation at the laboratory with a robotic arm that responded to human speech commands and in response moved small blocks on a table. Just the other day, virtually the identical system was shown on NHK World TV as an example of AI today – nothing new – done a half century ago! It seems that ignorance of the past abounds – forget the past and let it repeat.
The technologies involved in today’s chat AI are:
• Internet searches – like Google and other search engines that download the whole Web and index it all.
• Human speech recognition – technology that reaches back to the 1960s.
• Speech synthesis – again technology that reaches back to the 1960s.
• Text generation – also technology that is decades old.
But impressively, the “new” chat AI packed it all together, called it AI, and promoted it like the dickens. Most knew little of the past or of the technologies involved, and fell for it all – including much of corporate America which simply placed “AI” in front of what it was already doing. Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa were doing it all years ago – but they too now call it AI.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, digital computers were new and were promised to reform the planet and replace human workers. Fear and hype exploded – and then it all calmed down and digital computers part of today’s service economy. A few science fiction movies capitalized on our fears back then and did well in the theaters – the HAL computer in the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey went crazy and actually committed murder out of its artificial paranoia. HAL recognized human speech and responded with natural-sounding synthetic speech – just like today’s AI.
I am old enough to remember all the hyped technologies of the past that ultimately indeed had impact, but never to the extent promoted at the time. The list includes digital computers, artificial intelligence (the initial concept), time-shared computing, robots and factory automation, the World Wide Web (and .com), 3D movies, virtual reality, fiber-to-the-home, and the metaverse. Is today’s concept of artificial intelligence yet another example to be added to the list of over hyped and over promoted?
What to do? Balloons are fun to ride, but the challenge is to know when to return to ground and get off – or out of the AI hype. When it has reached the cover of Time magazine might be a good warning.
