Artificial Intelligence and Japan’s Fifth Generation

Dados Bibliográficos

ID10322751
AutoresColin Garvey (0000-0002-7346-8873, autor correspondente)
Ano2019
Volume88
Fascículo4
Páginas619-658
Data de publicação2019-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPacific Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0030-8684 • E-ISSN: 1533-8584
EditoraUniversity of California Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1525/phr.2019.88.4.619
OpenAlexW2980138805
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas9

In 1982, Japan launched its Fifth Generation Computer Systems project (FGCS), designed to develop intelligent software that would run on novel computer hardware. As the first national, large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) research and development (R&D) project to be free from military influence and corporate profit motives, the FGCS was open, international, and oriented around public goods. Although the FGCS did not plan any commercialized technologies, many American computer experts portrayed it as an economic threat to U.S. dominance in computing and the global economy—and policymakers around the developed world believed them and funded AI projects of their own. Later, however, the FGCS was remembered as a failure. Why? This article recasts the FGCS as an interstice in the shift from a state-funded regime of American science organization to the neoliberal privatized regime of R&D now ascendant around the world. By exploring how notions of economic competitiveness and national security shaped R&D, this article reveals AI to be a product of contingent choices by multiple actors—nation-states, government bureaucracies, corporations, and individuals—rather than the outcome of deterministic technological forces

Bureaucracy · Business · Dominance (genetics · Economic growth · Economics · Government (linguistics · National security · Neoclassical economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Profit (economics · Asian Industrial and Economic Development · Chinese history and philosophy · Law