Licklider was primarily referring to the need to suppercede punch card languages with ones with an interactive human language interface. Chiefly, McCarthy's Lis

Licklider was primarily referring to the need to suppercede punch card languages with ones with an interactive human language interface. Chiefly, McCarthy's Lisp, which he directed the Arpa/IPTOs funding towards, but it would apply to practically every language since - though in terms of interactivity still CL most of all. That said he also lead the funding of AI, so LLMs are not outside of what he was imagining altogether, for example he wrote about the need for a busy executive to communicate with his computer like he would his secretary, etc. But he also seemed to think that interactive programming environments could accomplish this goal. Sidenote, something that's forgotten is that Lick was a Lisp person. His archives contain his notes to SICP, and various toy programmes.