5 Milestones in the History of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence has made a big impact on the public consciousness, especially with the recent advances of chatbots, image and video generators, and other systems. However, this advancement was not made suddenly but is the product of decades of work in the field and incremental improvements. Here are five of the most important evolution points that were crucial in AI history.

In 1950, Alan Turing published a paper called "Computing Machinery and Intelligence." It posed the question, "Can machines think?" Turing didn't think to answer that question but rather came up with a game known as the Turing Test that was meant to show if an agent was artificial intelligence. The main goal of the game was to see if an observer could distinguish between responses from a human and a machine, and if not, it would mean that the machine passed the test.

ELIZA was the first artificial intelligence chatbot ever made. It was developed by MIT researcher Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966, and it generated basic responses based on keyword detection. It still managed to amaze people with its ability to mimic conversations and is considered a breakthrough in AI research.

Around 1986, the focus shifted from symbolic AI to connectionist approaches that are supposed to mimic brain functions. Geoffrey Hinton published a foundational paper that year focused on backpropagation as a method for training artificial neural networks. This would be the groundwork for more adaptive and flexible AI systems. Those are supposed to learn from data, and this is what drives today's most modern artificial intelligence systems.

In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue made headlines after defeating world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game series. The mastery of chess was considered a big benchmark for AI researchers for decades, and this public victory was a turning point. It demonstrated artificial intelligence was evolving its capabilities. Later, the AI AlphaGo would beat Lee Sedol in the Chinese board game Go, marking another benchmark.