The 1960 Paper That Saw the Future of AI

I stumbled upon the most remarkable paper forecasting our present-day emerging relationship with generative AI. To kick off this autumn, I really want to spread this fundamental read on AI.

In 1960, long before the term “artificial intelligence” was widely known, psychologist and computer scientist J.C.R. Licklider published a paper titled “Man-Computer Symbiosis.” At first glance, it sounds technical and dated. However, upon reading it, it feels startlingly fresh, almost as if it were written to describe our current relationship with ChatGPT and other generative AI systems.

Licklider’s core argument was simple: humans and machines should not be seen as rivals, nor should computers be thought of merely as tools to replace human effort. Instead, they should form partnerships.

In his research, Licklider observed that most of a scientist's or engineer's working day was not spent having insights or making discoveries. It was spent hunting down references, crunching numbers, plotting graphs, and wrestling information into usable form. Computers, he suggested, could take on this clerical and mechanical burden, leaving humans free to do what they are uniquely good at: Asking questions, making judgments, and reaching creative insights.

He even imagined what such cooperation might look like. Instead of submitting a problem to a computer and waiting days for a printout of results, a person would think together with the machine in real time, much as one might reason alongside a trusted colleague. He anticipated time-sharing systems that would allow many people to interact with the same machine; interactive displays where humans could sketch ideas and the computer would refine them; vast stores of searchable memory organized by pattern and association rather than just fixed addresses; and even speech interfaces for those unlikely to sit at a keyboard but in need of immediate access to computation.

Does it sound familiar?

Licklider’s vision is almost uncanny. He effectively sketched out the intellectual foundations of cloud computing, the graphical user interface, search engines, and voice assistants — decades before these technologies existed. Moreover, he situated these technologies within a philosophy of partnership. The point was not that machines would replace human thought, but that together they might “think as no human brain has ever thought.”

Sixty-five years later, this vision feels more relevant than ever. Much of the public debate surrounding artificial intelligence still centers on whether machines will eliminate jobs or render human expertise obsolete. Licklider offered a different paradigm, one that remains vital: The greatest power of computers lies not in supplanting us, but in augmenting us. The “symbiosis” term suggests a future where human imagination and judgment are amplified by machine speed and precision, rather than overshadowed by them.

Man-Computer Symbiosis is a remarkable early attempt to forecast how we might live with intelligent machines. But it is hardly the only one. I want to collect other writings from before the deep learning era that tried to glimpse the outlines of our present, whether they succeeded brilliantly or missed entirely. If you have a favorite example, I’d love to hear it.