History of Artificial Intelligence

1936

  • Alan Turing invents Turing Machine
  • Foundation for computation
  • Shows machines can compute

1950

  • Turing proposes Turing Test
  • "Can machines think?"
  • Focus on measurable intelligence

1952

  • Arthur Samuel's checkers program
  • Introduces machine learning
  • Improves via self-play

1956

  • Dartmouth Conference births AI
  • John McCarthy coins "AI"
  • Optimism for human-level AI

1965

  • Joseph Weizenbaum creates ELIZA
  • Early NLP mimics therapist
  • Shows conversational potential

1969

  • Minsky & Papert's *Perceptrons*
  • Critiques neural networks
  • Slows neural research

1979

  • Stanford Cart navigates
  • Uses computer vision
  • Early robotics step

1986

  • Backpropagation revives neural nets
  • Rumelhart improves training
  • Enables deeper networks

1997

  • Deep Blue beats Kasparov
  • Chess mastery via brute force
  • AI strategy milestone

2006

  • Hinton advances deep learning
  • Neural nets gain traction
  • Big data & GPUs fuel growth

2011

  • Watson wins *Jeopardy!*
  • Excels in NLP & Q&A
  • Real-time AI power

2016

  • AlphaGo defeats Lee Sedol
  • Deep learning masters Go
  • Intuitive AI capability

2020

  • GPT-3 by OpenAI released
  • Large language model excels
  • Transforms text generation

2023

  • Generative AI booms
  • ChatGPT, DALL-E gain fame
  • AI reshapes creativity

Key Figures in AI

Pioneers of AI

  • Alan Turing (1912–1954): Turing Machine, Turing Test, AI foundation
  • John McCarthy (1927–2011): Coined "AI," developed Lisp
  • Marvin Minsky (1927–2016): MIT AI Lab, neural networks, perception
  • Herbert Simon (1916–2001): Early AI theories, General Problem Solver
  • Allen Newell (1927–1992): Symbolic AI, cognitive modeling
  • Claude Shannon (1916–2001): Information theory for AI, machine learning

Machine Learning & Neural Networks

  • Frank Rosenblatt (1928–1971): Developed Perceptron, early neural net
  • Geoffrey Hinton (b. 1947): Deep learning, popularized backpropagation
  • Yann LeCun (b. 1960): Convolutional neural networks (CNNs)
  • Jürgen Schmidhuber (b. 1963): Co-developed LSTM networks
  • David Rumelhart (1942–2011): Co-developed backpropagation
  • Ronald J. Williams (b. 1953): Reinforcement learning, backpropagation

Modern AI & Deep Learning

  • Fei-Fei Li (b. 1976): Developed ImageNet for vision breakthroughs
  • Demis Hassabis (b. 1976): DeepMind, AlphaGo, AlphaFold
  • Elon Musk (b. 1971): Co-founder OpenAI, AI safety research
  • Sam Altman (b. 1985): CEO OpenAI, ChatGPT, GPT-4
  • Ilya Sutskever (b. 1985): OpenAI co-founder, deep learning
  • Dario Amodei (b. 1980s): AI safety, co-founder Anthropic

Robotics & AI Applications

  • Hans Moravec (b. 1948): AI robotics, computer vision pioneer
  • Rodney Brooks (b. 1954): Behavior-based robotics
  • Sebastian Thrun (b. 1967): Self-driving cars, Google Waymo

AI Ethics & Philosophy

  • Stuart Russell (b. 1962): Ethical AI development advocate
  • Nick Bostrom (b. 1973): AI safety, existential risks philosopher

Further Reading