Since ancient times, man has endowed intelligence to inanimate objects. In legends and myths, the ancient Greek god Hephaestus forged servants out of gold who looked like robots.
For centuries, thinkers such as Aristotle, René Descartes, Thomas Bayes, and others have described the processes and patterns of human thought, laying the foundation for AI.
The end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century
At the end of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, fundamental work was carried out to create a computer. In 1836, Cambridge University mathematician Charles Babbage and Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, implemented the first design of a programmable machine.
1940s
In the 1940s, Princeton mathematician John von Neumann developed the idea that a computer could store programs and data it processes in memory. At the same time, Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts laid the foundation for neural networks.
1950s
In the 1950s, Alan Turing, a British mathematician and World War II code-breaker, put the idea of machine intelligence into practice for the first time. He created a test that showed whether a computer could trick investigators into believing that the answers they gave were human.
1956 year
1956 is considered the starting date for the development of modern AI. A summer conference at Dartmouth College, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), brought together AI scientists and pioneers Marvin Minsky, Oliver Selfridge, and John McCarthy, who is considered to be the author of the term “artificial intelligence.” In addition, the event featured the revolutionary computer program Logic Theorist, created by scientist Allen Newell and cognitive psychologist Herbert A. Simon.
Logic Theorist, which could prove certain mathematical theorems, was called the first AI program.
1960s
The 1950s and 1960s were a time of active work on AI, which was heavily funded by the government. This led to significant advances in this area: for example, Newell and Simon published a common problem solving algorithm (GPS) that did not solve complex problems but laid the foundation for further development, and McCarthy created Lisp, an artificial intelligence programming language that is still in use today.
In the mid-1960s, MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum developed ELIZA, an early NLP program that laid the foundation for today's chatbots.
1970s and 1980s
In the 1970s and 1980s, the first difficulties arose due to the limitations of computer memory and other features. The government refuses to fund scientists working in the field of AI. This led to a waiting period that lasted from 1974 to 1980 (this time is known as AI's first “winter”).
Since 1980, AI research has been resumed, but not for long. The second AI “winter” continues until the mid-1990s.
1990s
Thanks to the new technical capabilities of computers, the 1990s marked a renaissance in AI. It was at this time that the fertile ground for the AI advances we see today was created. The development of AI is accelerating greatly, and in 1997, for the first time in the history of computer technology, IBM Deep Blue defeated Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov.
2000s
The 2000s were marked by a number of cool achievements: the launch of Google's search engine, Amazon's recommendation system, and Netflix. Facebook is introducing its facial recognition system for the first time, and Microsoft is introducing a speech recognition system for its subsequent conversion into text. In addition, Google is initiating Waymo's autonomous driving.
2010s
The 2010s were marked by even more amazing victories in AI: the launch of Apple's Siri and Amazon Alexa voice assistants, the founding of the OpenAI research lab, and the development of the GPT-3 language model and the Dall-E image generator.
The present moment
Finally, in the 2020s, generative AI appeared, a technology that allows you to create new content using hints in the form of text, pictures, videos, notes, etc.
If you want your child to discover the world of computer technology, sign up for a free one trial lesson on programming for the Progkids online school. All lessons are held in an individual format, as well as at a time convenient for you and your child, which makes them as comfortable as possible. Experienced teachers take a unique approach to each young talent and encourage students to undertake any creative endeavors. Our school has an internal educational platform where you can learn programming in a game format. Moreover, your child can create art using AI, learn to start their own blog, or create animated music videos. By the way, our school has its own online space where students share news, creative projects and achievements, participate in competitions, and play Minecraft and other games with teachers.
