A NOTE ON THE METAPHORICALLY CHARGED DISCOURSE OF EARLY ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE

This article studies the discourse about Artificial Intelligence in ea rly (1966-1970) articles in the popular press. It finds that the follo wing syllogism of deep metaphors operated to create an understanding o f the field: The computer is a brain, thinking is computing, sophistic ated programs give the computer a mind. I explore the action of these metaphors in generating weak-metaphorically based or strong-metaphoric ally based discourse. I examine the strong-metaphorically based predic tions of early practitioners and discuss difficulties faced by those w ho would replace the aforementioned syllogism with other metaphors.