Before the book with Morgenstein, Von Neumann single-authored a paper on game theory, which formalizes all of multiplayer reinforcement learning. Where Turing

Before the book with Morgenstein, Von Neumann single-authored a paper on game theory, which formalizes all of multiplayer reinforcement learning. Where Turing asks if a machine is intelligent, if it plays the Turing Game well, Von Neumann asks how such a machine should play to do well at the Turing Game, or any other parlor game for that matter. On another note, Von Neumann is surely put on a pedestal. I believe such sanctification to be natural. What is unnatural, is that in more recent years, whenever the name of Von Neumann is brought up, someone inevitably pops in the comments here to describe our hero of science as a genocidal maniac. On the MAD development, you have to realize that the USSR also had very smart mathematician minds working on this. So yes, it is as much a physical arms race as a mental/psychological one.