For my entire childhood, I’ve associated the term “Artificial Intelligence” with Wall-E and Star Wars characters. But no longer. AI is not out beyond the horizon anymore, but rather it is a very plausible reality. Countries are flooding AI companies with federal grants. Computing power in our world is doubling every 18 months. In fact, at the end of July, Facebook had to shut down one of its AI experiments because two AIs started communicating to each other in a language that they created, that humans could not understand. With this development comes much excitement and much fear. Computing has finally reached a new level, that could potentially mean even greater accomplishments in the future. However, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Steven Hawking have all warned that AI could potentially have unforeseen consequences on the human race. At this potential turning point in technology engineering, let’s take a look back at what got us here.
1955 – The term “Artificial Intelligence” is coined
In a study jointly proposed by many scientists and tech professionals, they mentioned the term “artificial intelligence”, the first time that phrase was used. That one term really brought all of the work that had been done in the field over multiple centuries under the same banner.
1997 – Deep Blue is the first AI robot to beat a world champion at chess
This was the first time that many citizens learned about the true power of AI. Deep Blue, an AI machine made by IBM, defeated Garry Kasparov, the reigning chess world champion. It was truly a defining moment in AI history that brought positive publicity and awareness to the field of AI.
2009 – Google starts to develop a driverless car
This was the starting date of Google’s driverless car development. Many aspects of road conditions and other cars had to be taken into account during programming, making this task widely considered impossible. But Google defied all expectations when it became the first self-driving vehicle to pass a driving test in the USA in 2014.
These three events are widely considered to be the largest huge milestones in AI development history. With every coming day, more developments are made, and we get closer to a world where AI will eventually match, and perhaps even surpass, human intelligence. Until then, we can only wait in suspense and in excitement for the world that awaits us!
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