Some AI Koans

These are some of the funniest examples of a genre of jokes told at the MIT AI Lab about various noted hackers. The original koans were composed by Danny Hillis, who would later found Connection Machines, Inc. In reading these, it is at least useful to know that Minsky, Sussman, and Drescher are AI researchers of note, that Tom Knight was one of the Lisp machine's principal designers, and that David Moon wrote much of Lisp Machine Lisp.

Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine


Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: “You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.

Knight turned the machine off and on.

The machine worked.

Moon instructs a student

One day a student came to Moon and said: “I understand how to make a better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the pointers to each cons.

Moon patiently told the student the following story:

“One day a student came to Moon and said: ‘I understand how to make a better garbage collector...

[Ed. note: Pure reference-count garbage collectors have problems with circular structures that point to themselves.]

Sussman attains enlightenment


What are you doing?”, asked Minsky.


Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky.


Minsky then shut his eyes.


So that the room will be empty.

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

Drescher and the toaster

A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal.

I would like to give you this personality test”, said the outsider, “because I want you to be happy.

Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster, saying: “I wish the toaster to be happy, too.

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