3. History of Artificial Intelligence

 The History of Artificial Intelligence

Although the concept of artificial intelligence has been around for centuries it wasn’t until the 1950’s where the true possibility of it was explored. A generation of scientists, mathematicians and philosophers all had the concept of AI but it wasn’t until one British Polymath, Alan Turing, suggested that if humans use available information, as well as reason, to solve problems and make decisions — then why can’t machines do the same thing? Although Turing outlined machines and how to test their intelligence in his paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence in 1950 — his findings did not advance.

The main halt in growth was the problem of computers. Before any more growth could happen they needed to change fundamentally — computers could execute commands, but they could not store them. Funding was also an issue up until 1974.

By 1974 computers flourished. They were now faster, more affordable and able to store more information. Early demonstrations such as Allen Newell and Herbert Simon’s General Problem Solver and Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA, which was funded by Research and Development Corporation (RAND), showed promise toward the goals of problem-solving and the interpretations of spoken language in machines, and yet there was still a long way to go before machines could think abstractly, self-recognize and achieve natural language processing.

In the 1980s AI research fired back up with an expansion of funds and algorithmic tools. John Hopfield and David Rumelhart popularized “deep learning” techniques which allowed computers to learn using experience. On the other hand, Edward Feigenbaum introduced expert systems which mimicked decision making processes of a human expert. But it was not until the 2000’s that many of the landmark goals were achieved and AI thrived despite lack of government funds and public attention.

Timeline of AI