We all know the ongoing AI wars that Microsoft and Google have started. The hype began last year with the advent of Generative AI tools like DALL-E and ChatGPT by OpenAI. These technologies shifted the landscape drastically from other overhyped technologies like blockchain and web3 (which still searches for a problem to solve) to AI. Several new AI influencers, AI artists, AI writers, AI tools, AI logo generators and a lot other utilities were created. With only a short prompt, DALL-E can generate amazing images. Like for example as provided in AssemblyAI blog, “a bowl of soup that is a portal to another dimension as digital art”
But behind all this amazing technology is an amazing history of over 50 years. Over this period several people and companies have tried so hard to make this possible.
It all started way back even before the first personal computers starting hitting people’s homes. In 1943, a seminal paper published by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts on artificial neurons is the first to explore this topic. Here is the paper if you wish to read: A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity | SpringerLink
Following their paper, in 1950, the genius scientist Alan Turing published a method to analyse and measure “computing intelligence” called as Turing test. It is relevant even today.
Following that, in 1956, John MacCarthy coined the term “Artificial Intelligence” at the historical Dartmouth conference. It was at this moment that AI gained its name, its mission, its first success and its major players, and is widely considered the birth of AI.
Remember, it was a time, old languages like FORTRAN were developed and companies like Apple and Microsoft didn’t even exist. IBM was the top tech company.
So many successful AI projects were developed till 1974. One of them is the famous WABOT-1. But after 1974, the first AI winter began. Investors stopped believing in the potential of AI because most of the systems at that time were overhyped and internally they were just programmed if else statements.
Again in 1980, a conference held at Stanford university, sparkled the interest for AI yet again. This time, AI came back with Expert systems. It was more or less the same if else statements but more sophisticated. It was doomed to fail.
The second AI winter began in 1987.
After several years, in 1997, IBM’s DeepBlue - a chess AI, for the first time defeated the then world champion in chess, Garry Kasparov. It was at that moment, everyone started looking into AI again. But this time it was different. Several new algorithmic approaches were created. This includes the idea of Machine learning, Back propagation, etc.
After 2000, several practical AI systems that are focussed on a specific task were developed. Technology became sufficiently advanced to collect large data and process them.
Several companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. started investing in AI and it became integrated in commercial products.
And fast forward 20 years, here we are today with advanced AI systems paint for us, write for us, talk and book an appointment at a saloon for us, even drive us to office. We are so much invested into AI than we realise. And with the rate, AI is advancing it is hard to imagine the innovations that will come out this year.