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Chapter 1 · References

References: The Dream of Thinking Machines

References - The Dream of Thinking Machines

Sources were checked on 27 and 28 September 2026. Primary sources come first in each group. Where a primary text could not be opened directly, the fact was confirmed through at least two independent descriptions of it and is marked as such.

Computation and its limits

  • Hilbert, D., and Ackermann, W., Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik, Springer, Berlin, 1928 (the Entscheidungsproblem posed as the main problem of mathematical logic). Scan: https://archive.org/details/grundzugedertheo0027hilb ; history: Copeland, B. J., "The Rise and Fall of the Entscheidungsproblem", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, supplement to "The Church-Turing Thesis". https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/church-turing/decision-problem.html
  • Turing, A. M., "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem", Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society s2-42, 230–265, 1936 (received 28 May 1936). https://doi.org/10.1112/plms/s2-42.1.230
  • Church, A., "An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory", American Journal of Mathematics 58(2), 345–363, April 1936. https://doi.org/10.2307/2371045
  • Rice, H. G., "Classes of Recursively Enumerable Sets and Their Decision Problems", Transactions of the American Mathematical Society 74, 358–366, 1953 (the theorem that non-trivial behavioural properties of programs are undecidable). https://doi.org/10.1090/S0002-9947-1953-0053041-6
  • von Neumann, J., First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, distributed 30 June 1945; reprinted in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 15(4), 27–74, 1993 (the stored-program design). https://doi.org/10.1109/85.238389

Logic and calculating machines

Instructions as data

Neurons, feedback and information

  • McCulloch, W. S., and Pitts, W., "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity", Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 5, 115–133, 1943. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02478259
  • Shannon, C. E., "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", Bell System Technical Journal 27, 379–423 and 623–656, July and October 1948. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x
  • Rosenblatt, F., "The Perceptron: A Probabilistic Model for Information Storage and Organization in the Brain", Psychological Review 65(6), 386–408, 1958. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0042519
  • Wiener, N., Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, MIT Press and John Wiley, 1948.
  • Hebb, D. O., The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory, John Wiley, 1949.
  • Minsky, M., and Papert, S., Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry, MIT Press, 1969 (the limits of single-layer threshold networks, taken up in Chapter 4).

Machine intelligence and its tests

  • Turing, A. M., "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", Mind 59(236), 433–460, October 1950 (the imitation game, the forecast of about 10⁹ binary digits, 70 per cent and five minutes, and "Lady Lovelace's Objection"). https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433
  • Jones, C. R., and Bergen, B. K., "Large Language Models Pass the Turing Test", arXiv:2503.23674, March 2025 (preregistered three-party tests; share of games picked as human: GPT-4.5 with persona 73% and without persona 36%, LLaMa-3.1-405B with persona 56% and without 38%, ELIZA 23%, GPT-4o without persona 21%; without persona prompts the two large models did not consistently outperform ELIZA and GPT-4o). https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23674
  • Jones, C. R., and Bergen, B. K., "Large language models pass a standard three-party Turing test", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 123(21), published 19 May 2026. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2524472123
  • Weizenbaum, J., "ELIZA—A Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine", Communications of the ACM 9(1), 36–45, January 1966 (the DOCTOR script and the sample transcript). https://doi.org/10.1145/365153.365168
  • Weizenbaum, J., Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, W. H. Freeman, 1976 (the account of his secretary asking him to leave the room; confirmed through several published quotations of the passage).

The Dartmouth proposal and the Logic Theorist

  • McCarthy, J., Minsky, M. L., Rochester, N., and Shannon, C. E., A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, 31 August 1955 (the study proposed for "the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College"; the opening sentence, the conjecture and the "significant advance ... for a summer" forecast). https://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmouth.html
  • National Research Council, Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research, National Academies Press, 1999, Chapter 9, "Developments in Artificial Intelligence" (the $13,500 request and the Rockefeller Foundation's $7,500 grant). https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/6323/chapter/11
  • Newell, A., and Simon, H. A., "The Logic Theory Machine: A Complex Information Processing System", IRE Transactions on Information Theory IT-2, 61–79, September 1956 (first issued as RAND report P-868 on 15 June 1956; the program Newell and Simon brought to the Dartmouth summer session). History: https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=742
  • Newell, A., Shaw, J. C., and Simon, H. A., "Empirical Explorations of the Logic Theory Machine: A Case Study in Heuristic", Proceedings of the Western Joint Computer Conference, 218–230, February 1957 (38 of the first 52 theorems of Principia Mathematica Chapter 2; the shorter proof of theorem 2.85). https://doi.org/10.1145/1455567.1455605

Testing and evidence

References — The Dream of Thinking Machines | KnowledgeOS