This world has seen four major revolutions that changed its entire face. The first revolution was in 1784 when the first steam engine was introduced. In 1870, the second revolution, electricity was invented. The third one was in 1969 when the word information technology was introduced in the world. And the fourth one is the revolution of Artificial Intelligence which we are experiencing right now. The Future of AI holds more inventions that will bring us closer to an unparalleled future.
In this article, we will cover the following topics:
Evolution of AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) makes it possible for machines to learn from experience, adjust to new inputs and perform human-like tasks. The earliest research into thinking machines was inspired by a confluence of ideas that became prevalent in the late 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s. So let’s have a look at the evolution of this life-changing technology from the early 50s to the present date:
- In 1950, Alan Turing devised the Turing test. If a machine could carry on a conversation that was indistinguishable from a conversation with a human being, then it was reasonable to say that the machine was thinking.
- 1956 to 74 is called as the golden era for AI. The Wabot project in 1967 built a robot that could measure distances and directions to objects using external receptors, artificial eyes, and ears. And its conversation system allowed it to communicate with a person in Japanese, with an artificial mouth.
- In the 1980s a form of AI program called Expert Systems was adopted by corporations around the world and knowledge became the focus of mainstream AI research.
- A new paradigm called Intelligent Agents became widely accepted during the 1990s. It is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success.
- In the first decades of the 21st century, access to large amounts of data, faster computers, and advanced machine learning techniques was successfully applied to many problems throughout the economy.
- By 2016, the market for AI-related products, hardware, and software reached more than 8 billion dollars. Also, the New York Times reported that interest in AI had reached a turmoil.
- Worldwide spending on artificial intelligence systems is estimated to reach $35.8 billion in 2019, an increase of 44% over 2018. And to more than double to $79.2 billion in 2022
The growth and evolution of AI is a continuous process. Now, before we start talking about the Future of AI, let’s have a look at the creative inventions done in the past which involves Artificial Intelligence.
Beginning of the AI Revolution
From the 1950s, many scientists, programmers, logicians, and theorists started in solidifying the modern understanding of artificial intelligence as a whole. With each new decade, there were new innovations and findings that changed people’s fundamental knowledge of the field of artificial intelligence. Also, it showed how historical advancements have catapulted AI from being an unattainable fantasy to a tangible reality for current and future generations. Some of the important advancements throughout the history of AI are:
1950s
Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, published “Programming a Computer for Playing Chess”, which was the first article to discuss the development of a chess-playing computer program.
Unimate, an industrial robot invented by George Devol in the 1950s, became the first to work on a General Motors assembly line in New Jersey. It focused on transporting die castings from the assembly line and welding the parts on to cars, a task deemed dangerous for humans.
1960s
- In 1965, Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist, and professor developed ELIZA, an interactive computer program that could functionally converse in English with a person. It blurted out canned lines for certain keywords using programmed scripts.
1970s
This phase witnessed the advancements, particularly focusing on robots and automatons. WABOT-1, the first anthropomorphic robot, was built in Japan at Waseda University. Its features included moveable limbs, ability to see, and ability to converse.
1980s
- The rapid growth of artificial intelligence continued through the 1980s. WABOT-2 was built at Waseda University. This inception of the WABOT allowed the humanoid to communicate with people as well as read musical scores and play music on an electronic organ.
1990s
- In 1995, Computer scientist Richard Wallace developed the chatbot A.L.I.C.E (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), inspired by Weizenbaum’s ELIZA. What differentiated A.L.I.C.E. from ELIZA was the addition of natural language sample data collection.
- Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer developed by IBM in 1997, became the first system to win a chess game and match against a reigning world champion.
2000s
In 2000, Professor Cynthia Breazeal developed Kismet, a robot that could recognize and simulate emotions with its face. It was structured like a human face with eyes, lips, eyelids, and eyebrows.
In 2009, Google secretly developed a driverless car. By 2014, it passed Nevada’s self-driving test.
These were some of the advancements and achievements of AI in the past. The current decade has been immensely important for AI innovation. So let’s see how AI changes our lives in the current decade.
Recent AI Inventions
The current decade has been immensely important for AI innovation. In recent years, artificial intelligence has become embedded in our day-to-day existence. We use smartphones that have voice assistants and computers that have intelligence functions. AI is no longer a pipe dream and some of its achievements in this decade are:
2010
- ImageNet launched the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC), their annual AI object recognition competition.
- Microsoft launched Kinect for Xbox 360, the first gaming device that tracked human body movement using a 3D camera and infrared detection.
2011
Apple released Siri, a virtual assistant on Apple iOS operating systems. Siri depends on a natural-language user interface to infer, observe, answer, and recommend things to its human user. It adapts the voice commands and projects an individualized experience for the users.
2012
- Two Google researchers trained a large neural network of 16,000 processors to recognize images of cats by showing it 10 million unlabeled images from YouTube videos.
2014
Microsoft released Cortana, their version of a virtual assistant similar to Siri on iOS. Also, Amazon created Amazon Alexa, a home assistant that developed into smart speakers that function as personal assistants.
2015-2017
Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo, a computer program that plays the board game Go, defeated various (human) champions.
In 2016, A humanoid robot named Sophia was created by Hanson Robotics. She is the first Robot citizen. With her ability to see (image recognition), make facial expressions, and communicate through AI, Sophia has more human-like features when compared to the other humanoids.
2018
- Google developed BERT, the first bidirectional, unsupervised language representation that can be used on a variety of natural language tasks using transfer learning.
- Samsung introduced Bixby, a virtual assistant. Its functions include Voice, where the user can speak to and ask questions, recommendations, and suggestions.
Artificial intelligence advancements are occurring at an unprecedented rate. Thus, we can expect that the trends from the past decade will continue swinging upward in the coming years. Now, let’s move on to the Future of AI and find out how it continues to act as a technological innovator.