Creation of Artificial Intelligence
Every day, we hear the term “Bleeding edge of technology” being used for “Artificial Intelligence”, but most of us don’t know that the development of artificial intelligence started back in the 1900s.
To know about the creation of artificial intelligence, we should know what triggered the thought or brought forth the idea of the creation of an electronic brain along with the first proposal and the first AI program and of course how the emerging field got its name “Artificial Intelligence”.
In 1951, Alan Turing, said “It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers… They would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage, therefore, we should have to expect the machines to take control.” Today, we see people debating whether AI is capable to take control over humans or not, Alan Turning has expressed his views.
In the 1800s, the role of neurons was discovered. Neurons are nerve impulses or electronic impulses which are used to transmit information/messages. Following this in 1948, Norbert Wiener published his book “Cybernetics”, which investigates the interaction between humans and more capable and more powerful machines. In the same year, Claude Shannon came up with his information theory.
Here Shannon explained what information is and how it can be transmitted. Not only this, but Shannon also played an important in applying Logic Algebra in digital circuits. Lastly, Alan Turning in his theory of computation said that any form of computation can be digitally described. All these raised the question, was it possible to construct an electronic brain?
In 1950, Alan Turing purposed the “Turing’s test”. This test is said to be the first serious proposal in the philosophy of artificial intelligence. This test is a way to determine if a computer is capable of thinking, in other words, is intelligent. Here is how it works. A human has to converse with a machine (not knowing that it’s a machine) and if the machine remains indistinguishable for a conversation, we can assume that the machine was thinking or is intelligent.
Later, in 1955, Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon made the first AI program, Logic Theorist. This program was engineered so that it could perform automated reasoning. This program proved to be so successful, that it solved 38 of the first 52 theorems in “Principia Mathematica”.
Coming to an end, a beginning in disguise. A year later in 1956, one of the most significant conferences of artificial intelligence was held. Dartmouth Conference is said to be the birth of “Artificial Intelligence”. At this very moment, Logic theorist was publicly presented. The main point of the conference was termed as “Every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it”. To conclude, this conference started “Artificial Intelligence” as a field.
This was the briefest I could write on the creation of AI. The debate on whether AI will supersede humans is still ongoing, however, Stephen Hawking, one of the best brains of the century, said that it could either be the best thing or the worst thing to happen to humanity.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This was initially a presentation given by me on “Making of Artificial Intelligence”. Later on, written as an article. Feel free to visit my Github for the slides and resources!
Thank you!