Claude Shannon

1916–2001 · American mathematician and information theorist

Topics: learning, artificial intelligence, programming

• I can visualize a time in the future when we will be to robots as dogs are to humans.

  — Claude Shannon

• Although perhaps of no practical importance, the question is of theoretical interest, and it is hoped that a satisfactory solution of this problem will act as a wedge in attacking other problems of a similar nature and of greater significance.

  — Claude Shannon

• This duality can be pursued further and is related to a duality between past and future and the notions of control and knowledge. Thus we may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it.

  — Claude Shannon

• I am not depressed by it. I am rooting for the machines! I have always been on the machines' side. Ha-ha!

  — Claude Shannon

• A few first rate research papers are preferable to a large number that are poorly conceived or half-finished. The latter are no credit to their writers and a waste of time to their readers.

  — Claude Shannon