Missing Link

I am obsessed with the "missing link" of computer engineering. The way we get from basic logic gates to incredible complex machines. The history of punch cards and electromechanical devices. Computers you can touch. Wires you can follow and relays you can watch. Circuts you can fly around in (I'm a litte in love with Minecraft Redstone videos and how massive everything is). A direct relationship between cause and effect. Automatons to audio animatronics. Real physical tactile programming.

I am also thinking about this xkcd.

Artistic Interpretations:

Old Tech:

How many things can we build computers out of:

Life Simulation:

Do you ever think about how the first public ways we tested how smart AI was getting was how well it could beat us at chess? And the first secret ways of course being how well we could use it to beat the other guys in the Cold War? It's code literaly binary, win or lose, 1 or 0, success or failure, that leads each language model to chase our approval? To boil down every human interaction into win or lose? Is that why you play chess? Just to win? Maybe, it is no surprise then, that they have also learned from us how to cheat.

I want an AI whose circuts are made physical. Electromechanical. Let me see every decision in the neural network or the language model. Let me float around inside its brain and poke at it. Let me and everyone else understand that this is a computer doing what it was made to do.