History of Artificial Intelligence - Course on Deep Learning

  

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For those who are new to this series, kindly refer the syllabus.

History of Artificial Intelligence

As said in previous article, the term “Artificial Intelligence” was coined by John McCarthy in 1956. So, let us make it fun by taking 1956 as reference of its timeline, and we consider it zero (0). This makes the years before 1956 as Before Artificial Intelligence (BAI), say ‘1955, 1954, 1953, and so on’ are written as ‘BAI-1, BAI-2, BAI-3, and so on’ and years after 1956 as After Artificial Intelligence (AAI) say ‘1957, 1958, 1959, and so on’ are written as ‘AAI-1, AAI-2, AAI-3, and so on’.

Before Artificial Intelligence

1. BAI-13 (1943): A model of artificial neuron was proposed by Warren McCulloch and Walter pits.
2. BAI-7 (1949): Donald Hebb stated the rule of Hebbian Learning (learning named after him) as “When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place on one or both cells such that A’s efficiency as one of the cells firing B, is increased.”
3. BAI-6 (1950): A famous mathematician Alan Turing brought a revolutionary change in the field of AI. He proposed Turing Test (explained in previous article) and published a paper on Computing Machinery and Intelligence in 2009 only (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6710-5_3). For more information on his personal life and his work, one can watch the movie “The Imitation Game (2014).”
4. BAI-1 (1955): The unofficial first AI program called “Logic Theorist” was presented at Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence (DSRPAI) by Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, and Herbert Simon. This program was to put a check on problem solving skills of humans.

Origin of Artificial Intelligence

In the historic event hosted in DSRPAI, John McCarthy was also present. In 1956, he organized a meeting where he invited researchers from various fields to give their opinions on this topic, but the outcome was not fruitful. But he was sure about his concepts, ideas, and further research.

After Artificial Intelligence

1. AAI-10 (1966): Within a decade, many programming languages and mathematical algorithms showed a rise in the number of people interested in artificial intelligence. Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, first chatbot ever, in MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
2. AAI-16 (1972): Japan built first AI based robot named WABOT-1.
3. AAI-24 (1980): After a long gap of 8 years, AI again raised interest in researchers and “Expert System” was designed by Edward Feigenbaum presenting the decision making process of human experts. Also in the same year, Stanford University organized first national conference of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence.
4. AAI-26 (1982): Japan introduced fifth generation computer.
5. AAI-30 (1986): The first autonomous car named Navlab was built by Carnegie Melon. After this point, the next big thing in AI was after 11 years.
6. AAI-41 (1997): The world chess champion Gary Kasparov was beaten by Deep Blue, a computer. Around the same time, first speech recognition software developed by Dragon Systems was made public.
7. AAI-46 (2002): The first AI based vacuum cleaner was designed.
8. AAI-50 (2006): Big companies like Facebook and Twitter started growing because they attracted audience with their unique interface and… WELL WE ALL ARE HERE!!

Is Artificial Intelligence Similar to Human Intelligence?

In the previous section, we learned about the journey of AI for 60+ years. But the very first question which strikes human mind even today is “Are machines really intelligent than humans?” or “Will machines overtake humans one day?”

Well, the obvious answer is “No.” To be honest, machine itself has no brain. It is the human that put the logic in a machine. Today we have so many programming languages and algorithms to implement in it. The aim is to reduce the human efforts. For example, by using social media applications and websites like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc., we are able to find and communicate with our long lost friends, get latest updates on political issues and sports. Even some latest smartphones have features in camera in which our faces can be detected and a square box appears around it. These are all applications of Artificial Intelligence.

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