The History of A.I.

1940s–1950s: The Concept of Artificial Intelligence Emerges

In the mid-20th century, foundational theories about machines thinking like humans were introduced. Alan Turing’s 1936 work on computability and later the 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” provided the philosophical basis for considering machines as capable of intelligent behavior.

1956: The Dartmouth Conference

AI was "born" as a distinct field of study during the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence in 1956. John McCarthy first coined the term Artificial Intelligence, and it's often cited as the formal beginning of AI as an academic field.

1960s–1970s: Symbolic AI and Early Expert Systems

AI was practically developed during the 1960s and 1970s when symbolic AI and expert systems first demonstrated tangible problem-solving.

1980s: The Rise of Machine Learning and Neural Networks

AI evolved with the introduction of machine learning and neural networks, marking a significant step beyond symbolic reasoning. Backpropagation and the rediscovery of neural networks in the 1980s by researchers like Geoffrey Hinton allowed AI to learn from data, leading to greater potential for intelligent behavior in machines.

1997: Deep Blue Defeats Garry Kasparov

AI was fully developed as a capable entity capable of defeating humans in strategic thinking when Deep Blue, IBM's chess-playing computer, beat world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

2010s: Deep Learning and Big Data

AI reached its modern form in the 2010s, with deep learning and big data leading to breakthroughs in a wide range of applications, from computer vision to language translation. The advent of deep learning (a subset of machine learning involving multi-layer neural networks) revolutionized AI’s capabilities, as demonstrated by Google's AlphaGo defeating the world’s top Go player in 2016.

Present Day (2020s): General Artificial Intelligence

GenAI is here - What does the future hold?