Artificial Intelligence History

As you know, AI today is a widely used tool in every kind of systems. However, how did it start? We had only one inventor or more people had invested in AI? AI is a recent discovery? When it became so powerful and why? Today's post will put you up to date to the Artificial Intelligence History.

Alan Turing

Well, everything started alongside the Second World War. Sadly, some of the human's biggest discoveries occurred during wars. In 1943,  Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts presented an initial mathematical and computer model of the biological neuron [2]. There was 1950 when John Von Neumann and Alan Turing created the technology behind AI. Turing created the called Bombe machine to decipher messages exchanged between the German forces. That system was the pillar of today's machine learning [1]. Turing was a huge impact in the Artificial Intelligence field, and still today some of his statements are updated and used. Turing questioned the possible intelligence of a machine for the first time in his famous article "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". Another of his declarations is that if humans talk with a machine without spotting that it is a machine, then the machine can be declared as intelligent.

The 50s were The Years. The biggest improvements in AI started there. Ferranti Mark 1, also known as the Manchester Electronic Computer, used an algorithm able to win in checkers game in 1951. Later, the General Problem Solver algorithm to solve mathematical problems was presented by Newell and Simon. And maybe the most important,  John McCarthy developed the LISP programming language what gave him the credit of being the AI father [1].  John McCarthy invented the term Artificial Intelligence in 1956 on his first academic conference on the subject [3]. Later, on the 1960s, Machine Vision Learning and developing machine learning in robots were the scientists focus. Consequently, in Japan WABOT-1, the first "intelligent" humanoid robot, was developed. The efforts of Professor Ichiro Kato gave us the WABOT-2, built at Waseda University. The robot could communicate with people, read musical scores and also play music on a keyboard [4].

Wabot-1(left) and Wabot-2(right)

Since the 50s many scientists tried to develop new AI systems, however, they found it quite difficult because at that time the available amount of data was really small. Today we have millions and millions of records being generated every day, every hour, every second. Back then, computers were starting to become more usable, being smaller and more efficient. Still, they did not have the power we can find today in the most regular computer. Internet? It started to become a real thing only in the 70s. As you can see, when AI started, it was really hard to find enough data to train the AI models.  It was only at the end of the 90s that AI grew popular again. And that was when the Deep Blue defeated the world chess champion, in 1997.

AI started with some issues off course, however, now we are having great achievements. Today, we have algorithms capable of overcome doctors regarding breast cancer detection [5], robots working with humans, systems that suggest products based on your needs and so many other AI applications. Now, AI is where it belongs, on top of the business world.

References

1. History of AI - Towards Data Science. (n.d.). Retrieved January 2, 2020, from https://towardsdatascience.com/history-of-ai-484a86fc16ef
2. History of Artificial Intelligence. (n.d.). Retrieved January 2, 2020, from https://www.coe.int/en/web/artificial-intelligence/history-of-ai
3. Smith, C., McGuire, B., & Huang, T. (2006). The History of Artificial Intelligence. The University of Washington, (December), 27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chembiol.2009.06.005, https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/csep590/06au/projects/history-ai.pdf
4. A Complete History of Artificial Intelligence. (n.d.). Retrieved January 2, 2020, from https://learn.g2.com/history-of-artificial-intelligence
5. Google AI system can beat doctors at detecting breast cancer - CNN. (n.d.). Retrieved January 3, 2020, from https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/02/tech/google-health-breast-cancer/index.html