The history of Artificial Intelligence (AI) began in antiquity, with myths, stories and rumors of artificial beings endowed with intelligence or consciousness by master craftsmen; as Pamela McCorduck writes, AI began with "an ancient wish to forge the gods."
The seeds of modern AI were planted by classical philosophers who
attempted to describe the process of human thinking as the mechanical
manipulation of symbols. This work culminated in the invention of the programmable digital computer
in the 1940s, a machine based on the abstract essence of mathematical
reasoning. This device and the ideas behind it inspired a handful of
scientists to begin seriously discussing the possibility of building an
electronic brain.
The field of AI research was founded at a workshop held on the campus of Dartmouth College
during the summer of 1956. Those who attended would become the leaders
of AI research for decades. Many of them predicted that a machine as
intelligent as a human being would exist in no more than a generation
and they were given millions of dollars to make this vision come true.
Eventually it became obvious that they had grossly underestimated the
difficulty of the project due to computer hardware limitations. In
1973, in response to the criticism of James Lighthill and ongoing pressure from congress, the U.S. and British Governments
stopped funding undirected research into artificial intelligence, and
the difficult years that followed would later be known as an "AI winter". Seven years later, a visionary initiative by the Japanese Government
inspired governments and industry to provide AI with billions of
dollars, but by the late 80s the investors became disillusioned by the
absence of the needed computer power (hardware) and withdrew funding
again.
Investment and interest in AI boomed in the first decades of the 21st century, when machine learning
was successfully applied to many problems in academia and industry due
to the presence of powerful computer hardware. As in previous "AI summers", some observers (such as Ray Kurzweil) predicted the imminent arrival of artificial general intelligence: a machine with intellectual capabilities that exceed the abilities of human beings.
Precursors
McCorduck (2004) writes "artificial intelligence
in one form or another is an idea that has pervaded Western
intellectual history, a dream in urgent need of being realized,"
expressed in humanity's myths, legends, stories, speculation and
clockwork automatons.
AI in myth, fiction and speculation
Mechanical men and artificial beings appear in Greek myths, such as the golden robots of Hephaestus and Pygmalion's Galatea.In the Middle Ages, there were rumors of secret mystical or alchemical means of placing mind into matter, such as Jābir ibn Hayyān's Takwin, Paracelsus' homunculus and Rabbi Judah Loew's Golem.By the 19th century, ideas about artificial men and thinking machines were developed in fiction, as in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Karel Čapek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), and speculation, such as Samuel Butler's "Darwin among the Machines." AI has continued to be an important element of science fiction into the present.
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