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."
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 field of AI research was founded at a conference on the campus of Dartmouth College in the summer of 1956. Those who attended would become the leaders of AI research for decades. Many of them predicted that a machine as intelligent as a human being would exist in no more than a generation and they were given millions of dollars to make this vision come true. Eventually it became obvious that they had grossly underestimated the difficulty of the project. 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. This cycle of boom and bust, of "AI winters" and summers, continues to haunt the field. Undaunted, there are those who make extraordinary predictions even now.[2]
Progress in AI has continued, despite the rise and fall of its reputation in the eyes of government bureaucrats and venture capitalists. Problems that had begun to seem impossible in 1970 have been solved and the solutions are now used in successful commercial products. However, no machine has been built with a human level of intelligence, contrary to the optimistic predictions of the first generation of AI researchers. "We can only see a short distance ahead," admitted Alan Turing, in a famous 1950 paper that catalyzed the modern search for machines that think. "But," he added, "we can see much that must be done."[3]
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.
Mechanical men and artificial beings appear in Greek myths, such as the golden robots of Hephaestus and Pygmalion's Galatea.[5] In the Middle Ages, there were rumors of secret mystical or alchemical means of placing mind into matter, such as Jbir ibn Hayyn's Takwin, Paracelsus' homunculus and Rabbi Judah Loew's Golem.[6] 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 R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), and speculation, such as Samuel Butler's "Darwin among the Machines." AI has continued to be an important element of science fiction into the present.
Realistic humanoid automatons were built by craftsman from every civilization, including Yan Shi,[9]Hero of Alexandria,[10]Al-Jazari and Wolfgang von Kempelen.[12] The oldest known automatons were the sacred statues of ancient Egypt and Greece. The faithful believed that craftsman had imbued these figures with very real minds, capable of wisdom and emotionHermes Trismegistus wrote that "by discovering the true nature of the gods, man has been able to reproduce it."[13][14]
Artificial intelligence is based on the assumption that the process of human thought can be mechanized. The study of mechanicalor "formal"reasoning has a long history. Chinese, Indian and Greek philosophers all developed structured methods of formal deduction in the first millennium BCE. Their ideas were developed over the centuries by philosophers such as Aristotle (who gave a formal analysis of the syllogism), Euclid (whose Elements was a model of formal reasoning), al-Khwrizm (who developed algebra and gave his name to "algorithm") and European scholastic philosophers such as William of Ockham and Duns Scotus.[15]
Majorcan philosopher Ramon Llull (12321315) developed several logical machines devoted to the production of knowledge by logical means;[16] Llull described his machines as mechanical entities that could combine basic and undeniable truths by simple logical operations, produced by the machine by mechanical meanings, in such ways as to produce all the possible knowledge.[17] Llull's work had a great influence on Gottfried Leibniz, who redeveloped his ideas.[18]
In the 17th century, Leibniz, Thomas Hobbes and Ren Descartes explored the possibility that all rational thought could be made as systematic as algebra or geometry.[19]Hobbes famously wrote in Leviathan: "reason is nothing but reckoning".[20]Leibniz envisioned a universal language of reasoning (his characteristica universalis) which would reduce argumentation to calculation, so that "there would be no more need of disputation between two philosophers than between two accountants. For it would suffice to take their pencils in hand, down to their slates, and to say each other (with a friend as witness, if they liked): Let us calculate."[21] These philosophers had begun to articulate the physical symbol system hypothesis that would become the guiding faith of AI research.
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