Abstract

Researchers in early artificial intelligence disagreed about what kinds of contributions the computer would be able to make to mathematics and often drew on anthropomorphic language to sound out its limits and possibilities. Among those anthropomorphic imaginaries were different students, imagined learners, and imagined classrooms. Pedagogical imaginaries, imagined students, imagined classrooms populate early AI as proofs of concept, explanations by analogy, and these in turn, shaped design and implementation. This talk will survey different approaches to the automation of mathematical proof and problem solving in the second half of the twentieth century by tracking the role of imagined learners and students in those projects.

Bio

Stephanie Dick is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. She is a historian of mathematics, computing, and AI in the postwar United States. She is co-editor, with Janet Abbate of Abstractions and Embodiments: New Histories of Computing and Society forthcoming in 2022 with Johns Hopkins University Press. She holds a PhD in History of Science from Harvard University.