The popularity of artificial intelligence in our daily lives has increased dramatically. Now, we see AI technology in phones, cybersecurity, and cars. But when did the concept of AI finally begin and what will its future look like?
1. AI was first conceptualized in the 1600s
While the ancient Greeks wrote about “intelligent robots” in religious mythology, artificial intelligence was first conceptualized by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a German mathematician and philosopher, towards the end of the century. 17th century.
When Leibniz was 20 years old, he came up with a theory that could be used to allow machines to automatically generate ideas. He hypothesized that human thought is, in any capacity, quantifiable and a subtle combination of fundamental concepts. Thus, Leibniz suggested that this combination could be replicated to allow a machine to do the same thing.
Leibniz named this theoretical mechanism “a wonderful tool of reason” and hypothesized that it could answer any question posed. However, the idea of a machine with this in mind has come under scrutiny. Many people believe that human thought is a form of spiritual or unrepeatable expression, rather than something rooted in science, a view that some still hold to this day.
This “wonderful mind tool” has never been successfully created and we have yet to see a machine that can answer every question in the world. However, significant moves are being made to create such a machine, as in ChatGPT and similar tools.
2. The term “Artificial Intelligence” was coined in 1956
While the concepts surrounding artificial intelligence have been discussed for centuries, the term was not formally coined until 1956 at a conference at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. At this conference, the field of AI was officially born with the appearance of this term.
Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw and Herbert Simon introduced the Logic Theorist program, designed to replicate the thinking and problem-solving processes present in the human mind.
After being introduced to the Logic Theorist program, Marvin Minsky, an MIT cognitive scientist, and several other prominent researchers and scientists spoke about how confident they are in the technology. British mathematician Alan Turing also wrote a paper on artificial intelligence in the 1950s and discussed building machines that think independently and test their intelligence.
3. AI can be found everywhere these days
While we have not yet seen intelligent machines or robots that behave like humans, AI is certainly being developed and improved every year, and it is already being used in different ways in many industries. .
First, look at your smartphone! AI is used in voice assistants, be it Google Assistant, Siri, Bixby, Cortana or Alexa. These virtual assistants use AI to understand your voice and make decisions based on what you ask or instruct. Facial recognition on phones also uses AI, as well as in object recognition programs (such as those offered by Samsung’s Bixby Vision).
AI is also currently being deployed in the manufacturing, education, and healthcare industries. For example, AI is being developed to help doctors make diagnoses and map out treatment plans. AI could soon be used to automate some basic functions so that doctors have more time in their daily schedules.
You can also find the presence of artificial intelligence in cars. Popular electric car company Tesla uses AI in its autonomous driving function, allowing cars to see upcoming sections of the road and make decisions based on what the system picks up.