John McCarthy: Biographical Memoir

Nils J. Nilsson’s 2012 National Academy of Sciences memoir recounts John McCarthy’s work on Dartmouth, Lisp, knowledge representation, and logical reasoning.^[1]

Contribution and scope

This is a scholarly biography, not an experimental alignment paper. Its historical narrative and bibliography help locate the intellectual background to Making Robots Conscious of Their Mental States. McCarthy’s interest in robot knowledge and ethical constraints provides context for later alignment questions; the connection is a reader’s synthesis, not a claim that he solved modern alignment.

Limits

A retrospective memoir reflects its author’s perspective. Follow its bibliography to original technical papers for formal claims. File hosting dates are not publication dates.