In his prescient 1960 article entitled “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” J.C.R. Licklider wrote:
[Compare] instructions ordinarily addressed to intelligent human beings with instructions ordinarily used with computers. The latter specify precisely the individual steps to take and the sequence in which to take them. The former present or imply something about incentive or motivation, and they supply a criterion by which the human executor of the instructions will know when he has accomplished his task. In short: instructions directed to computers specify courses; instructions directed to human beings specify goals.Licklider goes on to argue that instructions directed to computers should be more like instructions to human beings. Even today, this is a radical idea outside of AI circles. Most research on human-computer interaction (HCI) has focused on making interaction with computers more efficient by adding new input and output mechanisms. AI researchers, however, are working to fundamentally change the level of HCI from command-oriented interaction to goal-oriented collaboration. Furthermore, since Licklider wrote the words above, researchers in AI and the neighboring fields of linguistics and cognitive science have accumulated a large body of empirical knowledge and computational theory regarding how human beings collaborate with one another, which is helping us to realize Licklider’s vision of human-computer symbiosis.