How has artificial intelligence evolved?
The history of artificial intelligence dates back to antiquity when philosophers pondered the idea that artificial beings, mechanical humans, and other automatons could exist in some way. Artificial intelligence became increasingly tangible throughout the 1700s and beyond, thanks to early thinkers. Philosophers have speculated about how human thinking may be artificially mechanized and controlled by intelligent non-human machines. The thought processes fueled interest in AI began when classical philosophers, mathematicians, and logicians considered symbol manipulation (mechanically), which eventually led to the invention of the programmable digital computer, the Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC), in the 1940s. Its distinct creation inspired the idea of creating an «electronic brain». It was almost a decade before AI icons helped us understand the field we have today. Alan Turing, a mathematician, proposed a test to measure the ability of a machine to reproduce human actions to a degree indistinguishable from human behavior. Later, the field of AI research was founded during a summer conference at Dartmouth College in the mid-1950s. John McCarthy, a computer and cognitive scientist, began to use the term «artificial intelligence». Since the 1950s, many scientists, programmers, logicians, and theorists have helped solidify the modern understanding of artificial intelligence. With each new decade came innovations and discoveries that changed people’s fundamental knowledge of artificial intelligence and how historical advances have turned AI from an unattainable fantasy into a tangible reality for current and future generations.Automate 84% of user questions
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AI in 1940–1960: The birth of AI amid the rise of cybernetics
The time between 1940 and 1960 was marked by a combination of technological advances (accelerated by World War II) and a desire to understand how to integrate the functioning of machines and organic beings. In the early 1950s, John von Neumann and Alan Turing did not coin the term AI but were the founders of the technology behind it. They transitioned from computers to 19th-century decimal logic (which thus dealt with values from 0 to 9) and machines for binary logic (which rely on Boolean algebra to deal with the more or less essential strings of 0s and 1s). The term «AI» may be attributed to John McCarthy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Marvin Minsky (Carnegie Mellon University) defines it as «the creation of computer programs perform tasks which are currently performed more satisfactorily by humans» because they require high-level mental processes.- 1955: The term «artificial intelligence» is used in a proposal for a «two-month study of artificial intelligence involving ten people» submitted on August 31, 1955.
- 1957: Frank Rosenblatt develops the perceptron. Perceptron is an early artificial neural network enabling pattern recognition based on a two-layer machine learning network.
- 1958: John McCarthy developed the Lisp programming language, which has become the most popular programming language used in artificial intelligence research.
- 1959: Arthur Samuel coined the term «machine learning» in 1959, which reported programming a computer so «it learns to play checkers better than the person who wrote the program may play».
- 1966: Researchers have focused on developing algorithms to solve mathematical problems. Joseph Weizenbaum created the first chatbot called ELIZA.
AI in the 1970s: The release of Star Wars
Like the 1960s, the 1970s gave way to accelerated progress, especially in robots and automata. However, artificial intelligence faced challenges in the 1970s, such as declining government support for AI research.- 1970: WABOT-1, the first anthropomorphic robot, was created in Japan at Waseda University. Its options included movable limbs, the ability to see, and the ability to speak.
- 1977: George Lucas’s Star Wars is released. The film features the humanoid robot C-3PO, designed as a protocol droid and «wielding over seven million forms of communication.» Also featured in the film as C-3PO’s companion is R2-D2, a small astromech droid unable to speak humanly (the flip side of C-3PO); instead, R2-D2 communicates using electronic beeps.
- 1979: The Stanford Cart became one of the first examples of an autonomous vehicle. She successfully crossed the chair-filled room without human intervention in about five hours.
AI in 1980-1990: Expert systems
- 1980: Waseda University in Japan built Wabot-2 as a humanoid robotic musician capable of communicating with humans, reading music, and playing medium-difficulty melodies on an electronic organ.
- 1981: Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry allocates $850 million to implement the Fifth Generation Computer project. It aimed to develop computers that could translate languages, carry on conversations, interpret images, and reason like humans.
- 1984: Electric Dreams, a movie about a love triangle between a man, a woman, and a personal computer, was released. The film, directed by Steve Barron, showed how computers become indistinguishable from humans.
- 1986: A Mercedes-Benz van equipped with cameras and sensors became the first self-driving car.
- 1988: J Rollo Carpenter developed the Jabberwacky chatbot to «simulate natural human conversation in an interesting, entertaining and humorous manner.»
- 1997: Deep Blue became the first computer chess program to defeat a reigning world champion.
- 1998: Dave Hampton and Caleb Chang created the Furby in 1988, the first domestic robot or pet.
2000-2010: Rapid development of AI
The new millennium was dawning; after 2000, fears subsided, and AI continued to grow. As expected, more AI creatures have been created, as well as creative media (movies in particular) about the concept of AI and where it may go.- 2001: Steven Spielberg released a film about AI David in 2001. The film revolved around David, a child-like android programmed to love.
- 2002: AI entered the home in the form of the Roomba.
- 2004: NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity robotic exploration rovers navigate the surface of Mars without human intervention.
- 2006: AI entered the business world. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Netflix have also started using AI.
- 2009: Google secretly developed a self-driving car. By 2014, it had passed the Nevada self-driving test.
AI from the 2010s to present
The current decade has been significant for innovation in artificial intelligence. Since 2010, artificial intelligence has become part of our daily lives. We use smartphones with voice assistants and computers with «intelligent» features most of us take for granted. AI is no longer a pipe dream.- 2011: IBM Watson won a quiz that included hard questions and riddles. Watson has proven to understand natural language and quickly solve tricky questions.
- 2011: Apple presented Siri, a virtual assistant on the Apple iOS operating system. Siri uses a natural language user interface to infer, observe, respond to, and recommend to its human user.
- 2012: Google launched a «Google Now» Android app feature that could provide the user with information in the form of a forecast.
- 2014: Amazon built Amazon Alexa, a home assistant that evolved into smart speakers that act as personal assistants.
- 2016: Hanson Robotics creates a humanoid robot named Sophia. She got the status of the first «robot citizen».
- 2018: Google developed BERT, the first «unsupervised bi-directional language representation can be used in various natural language tasks using transfer training».
- 2020: Baidu releases the LinearFold artificial intelligence algorithm for medical and scientific and healthcare teams developing a vaccine during the early stages of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic.
- 2022: Development of the Metaverse, a permanent digital environment where users work and play together. The concept has been a hot topic since Mark Zuckerberg talked about its creation by merging virtual reality technology with the social underpinnings of his Facebook platform.
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