THE ROAD TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Resulting from a century of scientifc discovery and cultural infuence, AI and whatever quirky new use case or doomsday scenario it presents tops the popular news cycle and makes its way into everyday conversation.

According to Interesting Engineering, the idea of AI has been culturally engraved in the minds of humans since 1927 when “Metropolis,” a pessimistic flm that follows a humanoid robot intent on wreaking havoc, entered cinemas worldwide. Films like Metropolis coincided with progress in computer technology to introduce the possibility of AI as an eventual milestone, set to either free or imprison the world where it is implemented. Yet, beyond these philosophical choices or Hollywood ultimatums, scientists conitinued exploring the possibilities of AI.

A pioneering computer scientist, Allen Turing, published a paper called Computing Machinery and Intelligence in 1950. In this paper, he argued that if humans are capable of fltering through resources to fnd solutions, then machines are too. CMI crafted a framework for experimenters interested in building intelligent machines.

Yet, neither interest nor research papers could make up for the time period’s low computing power. According to Harvard University, computers could not store commands until 1949 , this being one of the requirements for AI technology. Additonally, The Allen Turing Test, made to determine whether a computer was intelligent by its ability to deceive humans was not seen as achievable until the computational hurdle was passed.

Though the next decades saw rapid technological progress, updates concerning the progress of AI came infrequently and the excitement surrounding AI lessened. To attract high-profle people that could fund new experiments, advocates of AI had to prove that machine intelligence was worth pursuing, hence they had to develop a proof of concept.

Eventually, an AI prototype was established, a program dubbed “The Logic

Theorist”. According to Jeremy Norman’s History of Information, the Logic Theorist was a program designed to emulate the cognitive skills of a human and is considered the frst AI program. In 1956, this groundbreaking software was introduced to top researchers at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on AI, co-hosted by LT developer John McCarthy. In this conference, McCarthy brought together researchers and patrons of computing science. Attendees felt that biological beings are not the only ones capable of processing thought. After this conference ended, many of the participants made key contributions to AI, ushering in a new era. Fast forward to 2023 as AI is fourishing, computers can store a multitude of information and interpret it quickly and affordably. The advocacy of leading researchers has resulted in an age where individuals have access to massive sums of information with the this once mythological idea of a computer that can think and act as humans no longer being distant.