The History of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most useful resources used today. AI is a computer system that performs tasks that humans simply can’t do (or can’t do as quickly). Although the modern use of AI is very recent, its history dates back a long time.

Quynh Pham, a worker at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, claims that AI began in the 1950s when scientists wondered whether it could perform tasks that humans couldn’t. Over the years, many computer systems were developed in order to attempt to create the first ever Artificial Intelligence. 

Alan Turing, a computer scientist who studied AI, suggested that computers could make decisions and function very similarly to humans. Over the next couple of years, many significant changes and improvements were made to develop AI. 

First, in the 1960s and 1970s, researchers made major developments in this field. Artificial intelligence became a “smart computer” and had developed problem-solving and logic-solving skills, which made it function similarly to human intelligence. 

However, because research was limited, many of these AI systems were not fully developed, and thus funding decreased. This ultimately became known as the “AI Winter.”

Later, in the 1980s and 1990s, AI research took a major jump with the development of expert systems. Expert systems are designed to mimic the exact decision-making skills that Humans have, allowing AI to feel related to humans and to communicate with them. 

The goal was to make AI feel as though you were talking to a human. With this development, AI was on the right track.

Because AI had the decision-making skills of humans, it started to be used worldwide in fields such as medicine, engineering, and finance. For example, medical expert systems were able to identify a patient's systems almost perfectly, allowing a doctor to diagnose a patient with a certain illness, thus saving countless lives. 

During this time period, there was a major limit to AI. Artificial Intelligence could only work within the parameters of given instructions, meaning that any knowledge not given by the programmer was not known to the AI. Because of this, developers are starting to think of a way in which AI could develop machine learning algorithms in which it would learn from previous experiences.

Finally, in the 2000s and 2010s, AI development increased more rapidly than ever, mainly because of the larger databases. AI had now developed machine learning, allowing it to learn from experience, going beyond the programming it had been given. Because of these advancements, AI is now used in almost every field of work.

Geoffrey Hinton is one of the most important AI developers of the modern world and is often titled as the “Godfather of Deep Learning.” Because of his work on neural networks, computer systems are now able to identify patterns, demonstrating comprehension skills of human beings.

Overall, the history of artificial intelligence shows how an idea from the 20th century has grown into a powerful technology that shapes the modern world. AI will continue to play an even greater role in shaping future jobs and human interaction with computer systems.