History of Artificial Intelligence: The Complete Timeline

AI has undergone 7 major evolutionary phases since 1950. This tutorial covers groundbreaking milestones, AI winters, and the explosive growth leading to today's generative AI revolution.

AI Research Funding (1950-2023)

1950s-60s (15%)

1974-80 (5%)

1980-87 (12%)

1987-93 (8%)

1993-Present (60%)

1. The Dawn of AI (1950-1969)

Key Milestones:

1950: Turing Test proposed ("Computing Machinery and Intelligence")
1956: Dartmouth Conference coins "Artificial Intelligence" term
1966: ELIZA - first chatbot (MIT)

Notable Systems:

Logic Theorist (1956) - First AI program
Shakey Robot (1969) - First mobile robot with perception

Technical Insight:

Early systems relied on symbolic AI and hand-coded knowledge rules

2. AI Winters & Resurgence (1970-1992)

Critical Events:

1973: Lighthill Report criticizes AI progress (UK funding cut)
1980: Expert systems boom (XCON, MYCIN)
1987: Lisp machine market collapse

Breakthroughs:

# Sample Prolog code from 1972
father(john, jim).
father(john, ann).
brother(X, Y) :- father(Z, X), father(Z, Y).

Impact:

First AI winter (1974-1980) reduced funding by 70% globally

3. Modern AI Revolution (1993-2023)

Era-Defining Advances:

1997: Deep Blue beats Kasparov
2012: AlexNet revolutionizes deep learning
2017: Transformer architecture introduced
2022: ChatGPT public release

Performance Growth:

Model	Year	Parameters	Benchmark
AlexNet	2012	60M	84.7% (ImageNet)
GPT-3	2020	175B	Human-like text

AI Evolution Cheat Sheet

Era	Paradigm	Key Innovation	Limitation
1950s-60s	Symbolic AI	Logic systems	No learning
1980s	Expert Systems	Domain knowledge	Brittle rules
2010s	Deep Learning	Neural networks	Data hungry

4. Future Trajectories

Artificial General Intelligence

Human-level adaptability

Project: DeepMind Gato

Quantum AI

Qubit neural networks

Research: Google Quantum AI

Neuromorphic Computing

Brain-like chips

Chip: Intel Loihi 2

Historical AI Study Plan

✓ Read original 1956 Dartmouth proposal

✓ Experiment with 1990s expert systems

✓ Compare AlexNet vs modern vision models

✓ Map transformer architecture evolution

AI Historian Insight: The 2023 AI Index Report reveals 70% of all AI breakthroughs since 2010 stem from just 15 institutions. Understanding historical context helps avoid repeating past mistakes like over-reliance on single techniques.

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