The history of artificial intelligence - how far back in time does it go and what were significant milestones? From the first inventions to AI as we know it today, groundbreaking developments in history have expanded new possibilities in the world of intelligent machines. Let's go on a journey together through the most important stages of this development that have had a lasting impact on AI.
The British mathematician Alan Turing developed the Turing machine in 1936. With this calculating machine, he was able to prove that machines have the ability to carry out cognitive processes, provided that the processes can be divided into individual steps and represented by an algorithm. With this discovery, Turing laid the foundation for the development of artificial intelligence.
In his article "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", published in 1950, Turing poses the question of whether machines have any intelligence at all. He wanted to find this out with a test. In the "Turing test", a person is asked to hold a conversation with two unseen conversation partners, a human and a machine. This is a question-and-answer game in written form via an electrical connection. According to Turing, a computer should ultimately be described as intelligent if it cannot be distinguished whether it is a human or a machine.
Computer scientists met at a conference at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in the summer of 1956. The aim of the conference was to present the state of research into intelligent machines. At the meeting, they came to the conclusion that machines can learn and simulate human intelligence. The programmer John McCarthy finally proposed the term "artificial intelligence". This makes July 13, 1956 the birth date of AI.
The American psychologist Frank Rosenblatt developed the first artificial neuron capable of learning - the perceptron. This is a mathematical model of an artificial neural network. This development ultimately served as the basis for machine learning.
In 1966, the German-American computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum created the computer program "ELIZA", which communicates with people. With "ELIZA", Weizenbaum wanted to simulate a conversation with a psychotherapist. This simulation ultimately worked via scripts.
In 1972, the American computer scientist Ted Shortliffe developed the expert system "MYCIN" for the treatment of diseases. This computer program contained the entire knowledge of a specialist field, bundled in formulas, rules and a knowledge database. "MYCIN" is designed to help doctors make correct diagnoses and find a suitable therapy.
Terrence J. Sejnowski and Charles Rosenberg created the "NETtalk" program. With the help of example sentences and phoneme chains, they taught it to speak. This gave a computer a voice for the first time. "NETtalk" could read, pronounce words correctly and even use them. This program was one of the first artificial neural networks, as it was able to learn from large data sets. Its structure and function are therefore similar to the human brain.
Garry Kasparov held the title of world chess champion for around 15 years. In May 1997, however, he was beaten by an intelligent machine. Garry Kasparov competed against the AI chess machine "Deep Blue" from IBM in a duel lasting several days - and lost. “Deep Blue" demonstrated that computers are superior to humans in terms of intelligence. However, criticism has also been voiced in this context. After all, the AI machine did not win through cognitive intelligence, but by calculating every conceivable chess move.
The AI technology "Watson" from IBM wins against two human participants in a US TV quiz show. The founder of this development is Thomas J. Watson, after whom the technology was named. Watson proved that AI can understand natural language and answer difficult questions in a matter of seconds. However, it was only through further developments in hardware and software that AI was able to make its way into everyday life. Thanks to powerful processors and graphics cards, normal consumers were able to use AI programs on computers, tablets and smartphones. Apple's voice assistant "Siri" comes onto the market in 2011. In the years that followed, AI assistants such as Microsoft's Cortana (2014) and Amazon's Alexa (2015) were also launched by other providers.
In 2016, the AI robotics company robominds was founded by Andreas Däubler and Tobias Rietzler in Munich. The software developer and the electrical engineer were united by a passion for technology and a heart for SMEs – united in the vision of making robotics easy accessible.Their goal was to give robots a perception and enable easy usability for everyone. What started as a vision of the two founders in August 2016, resulted about 1 year later in the first robobrain® - the first control platform for robots based on Artificial Intelligence. Today, the patented robobrain® technology provides the basis for automation solutions for a wide range of industries, such as the warehouse or the laboratory environment.
Google launches "Duplex", an AI system that can be used to hold natural conversations. The technology is designed to perform certain tasks, such as arranging a hairdressing appointment. IBM has also developed another AI system: "Project Debater". This program is capable of defending and arguing a point of view in a debate on complex topics. A debate is a good opportunity to train the capabilities of this AI system.
The development of new AI systems is now progressing in leaps and bounds. In recent years, a lot of work has been done on various language models. One of the best known is probably ChatGPT from OpenAI, which became available to the public in November 2022. Within the first five days, one million users had already signed up to ChatGPT. This shows that there is great interest in AI systems for private use. However, in addition to text-generating AI systems, image-generating AI systems have also been developed. DALL-E, which was published in April 2022, is taking the lead in this area. This technology develops matching images for a text description. However, AI has long been used not only for text and image generation, but also in industry. In the automotive industry, AI is needed for autonomous driving so that vehicles can move safely in traffic. To do this, they must be able to perceive their complex environment and react as quickly as possible to different situations in order to prevent accidents. This is done with the help of built-in cameras and sensors. The main difficulty lies in the fact that the AI has to recognize obstacles, people and other living beings in different circumstances, such as different seasons. Here, the same applies to AI as to humans: Practice makes perfect! In contrast to autonomous driving, where AI still has a lot of room for improvement, it is already being used successfully in robotics. AI is used to automate simple, repetitive tasks in a smart way. There are also AI based autonomous mobile or collaborative robots that are already being used in various industries. Thanks to the use of AI, productivity, quality and occupational safety in a company can be increased.
In view of the rapid developments in the field of AI in recent years, we can expect a major leap forward in the next ten years. German computer scientist and AI pioneer Josef Hochreiter has a clear idea of what AI will look like in 10 years' time: "In ten years' time, systems will be built that are more advanced. For example, they will understand how people interact with each other or how a city works". The computer scientist does not rule out the possibility that AI systems will then also develop a consciousness. However, areas such as science and education in particular will be heavily influenced by AI.
