智能科学与技术学报 (Jun 2023)
In celebration of McCulloch-Pitts ANN model’s 80th anniversary: its origin, principle, and influence
Abstract
In 1943, Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts published a paper titled “A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity”, which demonstrated that the functioning of neural networks could be described using logical calculus.This expanded the field of computational neuroscience and laid the foundation for the development of artificial neural networks.On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the publication of the M-P paper, the intellectual origins of the M-P theory was explored, taking into account the historical context and the authors’ career trajectories.With the help of examples from the original paper, the basic principles of the M-P model were outlined, and its advantages and limitations were summarized.Furthermore, the impact of the M-P theory on the development of information science was discussed, focusing on the authors’ contributions to cybernetics, including their work on circular causality and feedback mechanisms, which provided a foundation for the development of modern artificial intelligence technologies such as parallel intelligence and large-scale models.
