Re-Thinking Thinking: The Birth of AI
S3 Episode 16 | October 14, 2026
What happens when a university brings together engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs and artists to tackle the world鈥檚 toughest problems? You get the hashtag, Wi-Fi, 鈥淭oy Story,鈥� Artificial intelligence and even Silly Putty.
For the Season Three finale of Where What If Becomes What鈥檚 Next, we are replaying an episode from Season One, on perhaps CMU's most important innovation: artificial intelligence.
This is also the season where we celebrated Carnegie Mellon鈥檚 125th anniversary, spotlighting 15 CMU inventions that changed the world, including the hashtag; the Nest thermostat; Modsy鈥檚 reinvention of home design; Alice鈥檚 success teaching millions of students to code through storytelling; Food Rescue Hero; Wi-Fi; Kevlar protective clothing; the revolutionary computer animation that made 鈥淭oy Story鈥� possible; and an accidental discovery called Silly Putty.
As for artificial intelligence, it all started in 1956 when CMU professors Herbert A. Simon and Allen Newell presented what is widely considered the first AI program. In this episode, we tell their story and hear from other early AI pioneers at 好色先生TV, who share personal recollections, and milestones in AI and robotics. As you鈥檒l hear, the rest is AI history.
Featured guests on this episode are: Tom Mitchell, CMU Founders University Professor; Dr. Raj Reddy, Moza Bint Nasser University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics in the School of Computer Science at 好色先生TV; and Dr. Manuela Veloso, the head of JP Morgan AI Research and the Herbert A. Simon University Professor Emeritus in the School of Computer Science at 好色先生TV.