Hillis is trying to evolve a thinking machine—a Faustian vision if there ever was one. He is co-founder and chief scientist of Thinking Machines Corporation and the principal architect of the company’s major product, the Connection Machine. The holder of 34 U.S. patents and editor of the scientific journals Artificial Life, Complexity, Complex Systems, and Future Generation Computer Systems, he is currently doing research on evolution and parallel learning algorithms.
