The History of Artificial Intelligence | Artificial Intelligence from Past to Present

Artificial intelligence seems like a concept specific to film productions or science fiction books for those who do not use it in everyday life. But the reality is that artificial intelligence is becoming more and more integrated into our lives and is almost a century-old concept.
Just as seeing the emergence of the World Wide Web in the early 1980s, Google in the early '90s, and Bitcoin in the 2000s was utopian, trying to understand the innovations in artificial intelligence applications is now just as difficult.

From print publication to digital media, we are progressing at an unprecedented speed shaped by artificial intelligence today. Artificial intelligence tools that operate with human-like responses and can answer voice requests with practical functions on mobile phones and speakers have become the focus of companies worldwide.

The journey of artificial intelligence has transformed from a fantastic concept into reality by covering an extraordinary path from newly emerging clues in ancient myths to today’s complex algorithms. In this article, we go back in time and read the compelling story of the evolution of artificial intelligence. Happy reading.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) defines an artificial intelligence system as follows: “An AI system, being machine-based, produces outputs such as predictions, recommendations, or decisions for a specific set of objectives and consequently can affect the environment. This system perceives real and/or virtual environments using machine and/or human-based data and inputs, abstracts these perceptions into models through manual or automatic analysis (such as machine learning), and formulates options using model inference for the results it will obtain. AI systems are designed for different levels of autonomy.” (OECD, 2019)

In short, artificial intelligence is a computational paradigm aimed at mimicking human intelligence, allowing machines to learn from experiences, adapt to new inputs, and perform tasks traditionally requiring human intervention. At its core, AI consists of systems that can understand, learn, and apply information, thereby extending human capabilities and automating routine tasks.

To learn more about what artificial intelligence is, you can read this article.

The History of Artificial Intelligence

The idea of "artificial intelligence" dates back thousands of years, to ancient philosophers who dealt with matters of life and death. In ancient times, inventors created mechanical devices called “automatons” that moved independently of human intervention. Years later, one of the most famous automatons was created by Leonardo da Vinci in 1495. Since then, the concept of artificial intelligence has evolved over centuries alongside the philosophical and scientific foundations laid by some of the brightest minds, paving the way for the artificial intelligence we are familiar with today.

The Foundation of Artificial Intelligence

In the early 1900s, many articles focusing on the idea of artificial humans were written. Scientists of all kinds began to ask the question: Is it possible to create an artificial brain? Indeed, some inventors created certain versions of what we now call "robots," although most were relatively simple. These mostly operated on steam power and some could make facial expressions and even walk.

- 1921: Czech playwright Karel Čapek published his science fiction play “Rossum's Universal Robots.” In the play, he introduced the concept of “artificial humans” called robots. This was the first known use of the word.

- 1929: Japanese professor Makoto Nishimura built the first Japanese robot named Gakutensoku.

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- 1949: Computer scientist Edmund Callis Berkeley published the book “The Mind or Thinking Machines,” which compared new computer models to the human brain. In the book, he stated that machines are increasingly capable of processing large amounts of information with speed and skill.

The Birth of Artificial Intelligence: 1950-1959

The emergence of artificial intelligence as a noticeable field of study occurred in the early 1950s. The work of British mathematician and logician Alan Turing marked this period.

- 1950: In 1950, Alan Turing introduced the concept of machine intelligence known as The Turing Test. The test was designed to evaluate a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to or indistinguishable from that of a human. Turing's ideas paved the way for artificial intelligence to develop as a scientific discipline.

- 1952: Computer scientist Arthur Samuel developed a computer program that played checkers; it became the first program to learn to play the game independently.

- 1956: The Dartmouth Conference in 1956 is considered the birth of artificial intelligence as a field. The conference, organized by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon, brought together researchers interested in neural networks and the automation of intelligent behavior. The term "Artificial Intelligence" was coined and adopted at this conference.

-1958: John McCarthy developed Lisp, a programming language that became popular in artificial intelligence research.

The Maturation of Artificial Intelligence: 1959-1979

The period between the introduction of the term "artificial intelligence" and the 1980s was a time of rapid development in AI research. From programming languages still in use today to books and movies exploring the idea of robots, artificial intelligence quickly became a mainstream concept.

- 1959: Arthur Samuel coined the term machine learning.

- 1961: The industrial robot Unimate, invented by George Devol, became the first robot to work on an assembly line at General Motors in New Jersey. It was tasked with carrying die casings and weld pieces (considered dangerous for humans) in cars.

- 1965: Edward Feigenbaum and Joshua Lederberg created the first "expert system," a type of artificial intelligence programmed to mimic human thinking and decision-making abilities.

- 1966: Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, the first chatterbot (later shortened to chatbot) designed as a fake psychotherapist using natural language processing (NLP) to converse with humans.

-1973: Applied mathematician James Lighthill gave a report to the British Science Council, highlighting that advances in artificial intelligence were not as impressive as scientists had promised. This led to a decrease in support and funding for AI research from the British government.

-1979: James L. Adams created The Stanford Cart, one of the first examples of an autonomous vehicle in 1961. In 1979, the vehicle successfully moved without human intervention in a room filled with chairs, reaching speeds of up to 55 mph without any obstacles or human drivers.

The AI Boom: 1979-1987

The 1980s saw a period of rapid growth in artificial intelligence, known as the "AI boom." During this period, governments provided funding for research. Deep learning techniques and the use of expert systems became more popular.

- 1980: The first expert system, known as XCON, entered the commercial market. It was designed to help order computer systems by automatically selecting components based on the customer's needs.

- 1981: The Japanese government allocated $850 million to the Fifth Generation Computer Project. Their goals were to create computers capable of translating and speaking human languages.

- 1984: The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) announced that an AI winter was approaching, predicting reduced funding and interest that would significantly hinder research.

- 1986: Mercedes-Benz produced and marketed an unmanned minibus equipped with cameras and sensors under the management of Ernst Dickmanns. It could travel at speeds up to 55 mph on roads without any obstacles or human drivers.

AI Winter: 1987-1993

The late 1980s and early 1990s marked a period of disappointment often referred to as the "AI winter." As AAAI had warned, an AI winter occurred, leading to funding cuts and a general slowdown in artificial intelligence research and development. Both private investors and governments lost interest in AI, halting their funding due to high costs and seemingly low returns.

Revival of Artificial Intelligence: 1993-2011

Despite the lack of funding during the AI winter, the early 1990s saw some impressive advancements in AI research, including the introduction of the first AI system capable of defeating a world chess champion. The increased interest in artificial intelligence led to increased research funding, enabling more progress.

- 1997: Developed by IBM, Deep Blue became the first program to defeat the world chess champion Gary Kasparov.

- 1997: Windows released a speech recognition software developed by Dragon Systems.

- 2000: Professor Cynthia Breazeal developed Kismet, a robot capable of recognizing and simulating emotions with its face. Its eyes, lips, eyelids, and eyebrows were designed to resemble a human face.

- 2002: The first Roomba was released.

- 2003: NASA deployed two rovers to Mars that roamed the planet's surface without human intervention.

- 2006: Companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Netflix began using artificial intelligence as part of their advertising and user experience (UX) algorithms.

- 2010: Microsoft released the Xbox 360 Kinect, the first game hardware designed to track body movements and translate them into game directions.

- 2011: A natural language processing computer named Watson, programmed to answer questions, won Jeopardy against two former champions on television.

- 2011: Apple released Siri, the first popular virtual assistant.

Artificial General Intelligence: 2011-Present

The past decade has been extremely significant in terms of artificial intelligence innovation. Since 2010, artificial intelligence has become a part of our daily lives.

- 2012: Two researchers from Google (Jeff Dean and Andrew Ng) trained a neural network to recognize cats without showing labeled pictures or background information.

- 2014: Microsoft released Cortana, a virtual assistant similar to Siri.

- 2014: Amazon created Amazon Alexa, a home assistant that turned into smart speakers functioning as personal assistants.

- 2015: Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Steve Wozniak signed an open letter that banned the development of autonomous weapons for war purposes in government systems worldwide.

- 2016: Hanson Robotics created Sophia, the first humanoid robot known as the "robot citizen," capable of mimicking emotions and communicating realistically.

- 2017: Developed by Google DeepMind, AlphaGo, a computer program that plays the board game Go, defeated several (human) champions.

- 2018: Alibaba's language processing AI surpassed human intelligence on the Stanford reading and comprehension test. Alibaba Language Processing scored "82.44" compared to the human score of "82.30" on a set of 100,000 questions.

- 2018: Google developed BERT, the first "bidirectional, unsupervised language representation" that can be used in various natural language tasks by utilizing transfer learning.

- 2020: OpenAI began beta testing GPT-3, a model that uses deep learning to generate code, poetry, and other language and writing tasks.

- 2021: OpenAI developed DALL-E, which can process and understand images well enough to create accurate captions, bringing AI a step closer to understanding the visual world.

What Does the Future Hold?

Now that we've returned to the present, you probably have a natural question on your mind: What’s next for artificial intelligence?

We can never fully predict the future. However, many leading experts are talking about the possible future of artificial intelligence, allowing us to make informed guesses. We can expect greater adoption of AI by businesses of all sizes, changes in the workforce as more automation both eliminates and creates jobs, more robotics technology, and autonomous vehicles. If you want to read a more comprehensive article about the future of artificial intelligence and AI engineering, make sure to check out this article.