AI School › What AI is · Lesson 6 of 130

🕰️ A short history of AI

From a mathematician 70 years ago to today's chatbots: an old idea come true.

The idea of a thinking machine is decades old. In the 1950s the mathematician Alan Turing asked: "can machines think?" and invented a game to find out, still famous today. For many years though, computers were too slow and data too scarce: AI remained a promise.

Then three things changed together: extremely powerful computers, an internet full of texts and photos to learn from, and new mathematical ideas called neural networks, inspired by the brain. Since 2022 anyone can talk to an AI from their phone. You are living through the most exciting chapter of this story, and the next chapters will be written by your generation.

🎒 Try it in class (or at home)

Timeline: draw the milestones on a poster (1950 Turing → 1997 a computer beats the chess champion → 2022 chatbots for everyone) and add your own prediction for 2035.

← Lesson 5: Does AI really understand? · Lesson 7: The trick: predicting the next word →

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