Artificial Intelligence's "Holy Grail" Victory

In 1943, at the height of World War II, the U.S. military hired an audacious psychologist named B.F. Skinner to develop pigeon-guided missiles. These were the early days of munitions guidance technology, and the Allies were apparently quite desperate to find more reliable ways to get missiles to hit their targets.

It went like this: Skinner trained pigeons to peck at an image of the military target projected onto a screen. Whenever their beaks hit the moving target dead center, he rewarded the birds with food pellets. Once the pigeons had learned how to peck at targets, they earned their wings: Skinner would strap three of his little pilots into a missile cockpit specially fitted with straps attached to gyroscopes that would steer the bomb.

The goal was to have the pigeons peck at an image of the bomb's target, their little straps twisting and bending, gyroscopes whirling, guiding the bomb and the birds to their final resting place.