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What really is Artificial Intelligence about?


In 2014, Professor Hawking warned that: The development of (true) artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race, (Cellan-Jones, Technology correspondent, BBC). In a follow up later this month, he is again reported as saying that artificial intelligence could be humanity's greatest disaster

History of artificial intelligence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The history of artificial intelligence (AI) began in antiquity, with myths, stories and rumors of artificial beings endowed with intelligence or consciousness by master craftsmen; as Pamela McCorduck writes, AI began with "an ancient wish to forge the gods."[1] The seeds of modern AI were planted by classical philosophers who attempted to describe the process of human thinking as the mechanical manipulation of symbols. This work culminated in the invention of the programmable digital computer in the 1940s, a machine based on the abstract essence of mathematical reasoning. This device and the ideas behind it inspired a handful of scientists to begin seriously discussing the possibility of building an electronic brain. The Turing test was proposed by British mathematician Alan Turing in his 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, which opens with the words: "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'" The term'Artificial Intelligence' was created at a conference held at Dartmouth College in 1956.[2] Allen Newell, J. C. Shaw, and Herbert A. Simon pioneered the newly created artificial intelligence field with the Logic Theory Machine (1956), and the General Problem Solver in 1957.[3] In 1958, John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky started the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab with 50,000.[4] John McCarthy also created LISP in the summer of 1958, a programming language still important in artificial intelligence research.[5] In 1973, in response to the criticism of James Lighthill and ongoing pressure from congress, the U.S. and British Governments stopped funding undirected research into artificial intelligence. Seven years later, a visionary initiative by the Japanese Government inspired governments and industry to provide AI with billions of dollars, but by the late 80s the investors became disillusioned and withdrew funding again. McCorduck (2004) writes "artificial intelligence in one form or another is an idea that has pervaded Western intellectual history, a dream in urgent need of being realized," expressed in humanity's myths, legends, stories, speculation and clockwork automatons.[6] Mechanical men and artificial beings appear in Greek myths, such as the golden robots of Hephaestus and Pygmalion's Galatea.[7] In the Middle Ages, there were rumors of secret mystical or alchemical means of placing mind into matter, such as J?bir ibn Hayy?n's Takwin, Paracelsus' homunculus and Rabbi Judah Loew's Golem.[8] By the 19th century, ideas about artificial men and thinking machines were developed in fiction, as in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Karel?apek's

We Almost Gave Up On Building Artificial Brains - The Crux


Today artificial neural networks are making art, writing speeches, identifying faces and even driving cars. It feels as if we're riding the wave of a novel technological era, but the current rise in neural networks is actually a renaissance of sorts. It may be hard to believe, but artificial intelligence researchers were already beginning to see the promise in neural networks during World War II in their mathematical models. But by the 1970s, the field was ready to give up on them entirely. "[T]here were no impressive results until computers grew up, that is until the past 10 years," Patrick Henry Winston, a professor at MIT who specializes in artificial intelligence, says.

Artificial intelligence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

