Computer vision: AI imaginaries and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Abstract

AbstractThis paper explores the way in which computer scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) constructed visions of the future in 1960s America to direct the AI and computing research agendas. It argues that MIT computer scientists resisted attempts by the state to control the future of computing by fabricating imaginaries to covertly exert influence over the research environment. The paper examines the impact of the Cold War military–industrial complex on academia, which provided opportunities for research to take place whilst introducing challenges to autonomy. It makes the case that computer scientists such as Marvin Minsky and Fernando J. Corbato carefully shaped narratives across film, television and the media to promote desirable futures centering their own technical approaches. Acknowledging that instruments of the state appealed to the future to guide research towards strategically sensitive areas in the context of Cold War technoscientific contest, it asserts that intensifying ties between military and academic institutions afforded researchers both the latitude and motivation to construct independent visions of the future. In doing so, the paper aims to complicate assumptions about imaginaries as solely tools of governance by highlighting scientists' creativity in navigating institutional constraints to wrest back control of the future.