History of AI
You'll be able to
- Sketch AI's journey from logic to deep learning
- Name the major 'seasons' of AI development
- Connect historical ideas to today's tools
AI began as a dream in the 1950s, when researchers asked whether machines could think. Early systems were symbolic: they manipulated logical symbols using hand-written rules, and in 1956 the term 'artificial intelligence' was coined at Dartmouth College.
Progress came in waves. The 1960s and 70s saw early enthusiasm followed by an 'AI winter', when expectations outpaced the hardware of the time. The 1980s brought expert systems. The 2010s changed everything: cheaper compute, huge datasets, and deep neural networks enabled machines to beat humans at complex games and understand images and speech.
Key eras
- 1950s–60s: symbolic reasoning and early ambitions.
- 1980s: expert systems and rule-based knowledge.
- 1990s–2000s: machine learning and statistical methods.
- 2010s–now: deep learning, transformers, and generative AI.
Challenge
Timeline builder
In two sentences, explain why the same idea — learning from data — failed in the 1960s but succeeded in the 2010s.
Knowledge Check
History of AI
Which development was central to the modern AI revolution of the 2010s?
The term 'artificial intelligence' has existed since at least the 1950s.
Answer all questions to submit.