by Admin | Jul 23, 2021 | Chronicles, News
This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert published Perceptrons in 1969. The book explored the concept of the “perceptron”, but also highlighted its limitations. It was also pessimistic in its predictions for AI, and was thought to have been a cause for the first AI winter. There was a revised and expanded edition published in 1988, which added a chapter countering criticisms of the book made in the twenty years after its publication.
Marvin Minksy was an important pioneer in the field of AI. He penned the research proposal for the Dartmouth Conference, which coined the term “Artificial Intelligence”, and he was a participant in it when it was hosted the next summer. Minsky would also co-founded the MIT AI labs, which went through different names, and the MIT Media Laboratory. In terms of popular culture, he was an adviser to Stanley Kubrick’s acclaimed movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. He won the Turing Award in 1969.
Seymour Papert was a South African-born mathematician and computer scientist. He was mainly associated with MIT for his teaching and research. He was also a pioneer in Artificial Intelligence. Papert was also a co-creator of the Logo programming language, which is used educationally.
The History of AI initiative considers this publication important because it furthered discourses on AI, specifically on perceptrons. The book was also a cause for the first AI winter, a pivotal event in the history of AI. Furthermore, Marvin Minsky was one of the founders of AI. Thus, HAI sees Perceptrons as meaningful in the development of Artificial Intelligence.
by Admin | Jul 16, 2021 | Chronicles, News
This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – Frank Rosenblatt developed perceptrons in 1957. It is a form of neural network that allowed pattern-recognition.
Frank Rosenblatt was an American psychologist. Born in 1928, Rosenblatt would go on to study at Cornell University for both his undergraduate studies and doctorate. He worked at Calspan, then the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, where he was a psychologist and became the head of one of the departments there. This lab is also where he would develop perceptrons. In 1959, he went to work at the Cornell campus on Ithaca, becoming a professor and director of programs. Rosenblatt passed away in 1970.
The Perceptron is a device that was built with biological principles ability to learn in mind. It was originally simulated on an IBM machine in 1957. Rosenblatt received media recognition and coverage for the Perceptron, with magazines such as the New Yorker proclaiming that it was “a remarkable machine… capable of what amounts to thought.” However, Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert put a damper on the enthusiasm for Perceptrons when they published a book describing its limitations.
This development is considered an event in the history of AI since Perceptrons were seen as one of the precursors to artificial intelligence. It also displays the early thought and reception to the growing AI field. Thus, the HAI initiative considers this event one of the events in the History of AI.
by Admin | Jul 9, 2021 | Chronicles, News
This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – Bletchley Park cryptologists broke the German Enigma code on 9th July, 1941. Alan Turing, considered the founder of computer science and A, played a vital role in this process in developing the Bombe.
Alan Turing was a British computer scientist and cryptanalyst. He developed the Turing machine, a model of a general-purpose computer, in 1936. During the Second World War, he worked at Bletchley Park (Government Code and Cyper School) as a codebreaker for the United Kingdom. At his time here, he would play a critical role in solving Enigma, Germany’s wartime infamous encryption system. Solving Enigma helped turning the tide of the war in favour of the Allies. After the war, he would go on to develop the Turing test in 1950. Alan Turing is widely considered the father of modern Artificial Intelligence, as well as being highly influential in theoretical computer science. The “Nobel Prize of Computing”, the ACM Turing Award, is named after him.
The History of AI initiative considers this event to be important due to Alan Turing being a pivotal figure in the development of Artificial Intelligence, computing, and machine learning. Furthermore, devices and methods used to help break the code are precursors to computers and AI. Thus, this development in the war is a critical moment in the History of AI.
by Admin | Jul 2, 2021 | Chronicles, News
This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – The Democratic Alliance on Digital Governance Conference was hosted on July 1st, 2020. The subheading of this event was “Protecting and Strengthening Democracy in the Aftermath of COVID-19”.
This conference was a collaboration between the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) and the Boston Global Forum. Leaders of the IPAC – Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Senator Kimberley Kitching, and MEP Miriam Lexmann – spoke and dialoged with political leaders and distinguished thinkers to build new alliances and new global economic strategies after the COVID-19 pandemic. The event was moderated by Governor Michael Dukakis. The Democratic Alliance is a part of the Social Contract 2020, A New Social Contract in the Age of AI.
This conference, albeit happening just in the past year, is a contributing stone to the foundation and the road to the Social Contract 2020, which was released later that year. Thus, the HAI project considers this a milestone in the development of artificial intelligence, in broader society and in the context of the global pandemic.
by Admin | Jun 26, 2021 | Chronicles, News
This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – DARPA founded the Strategic Computing Initiative to fund research of advanced computer hardware and artificial intelligence in 1983. DARPA stands for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a research and development agency founded by the US Department of Defense in 1958 as the ARPA. Although its aim was for usage in the military, many of the innovations the agency funded were beyond the requirements for the US military. Some technologies that emerged from the backing of DARPA are computer networking and graphical user interfaces. DARPA works with academics and industry and report directly to senior DoD officials.
The Strategic Computing Initiative was founded in 1983, after the first AI winter in the 70s. The initiative supported projects that helped develop machine intelligence, from chip design to AI software. The DoD spent a total of 1 billion USD (not adjusted for inflation) before the program’s shutdown in 1993, even though there were several cuts in the late 80s. Although the initiative failed to reach its overarching goals, specific targets were still met.
This project was created in response to Japan’s Fifth Generation Computer program, funded by the Japanese Ministry of Trade and Industry in 1982. The goal of this program was to create computers with massively parallel computing and logic programming and to propel Japan to the top spots in advanced technology. This will then create a platform for future developments in AI. By the time of the program’s end, the opinion of it was mixed, divided between considering it a failure or ahead of its time.
Although the results of the SCI and other computer/AI projects in the 80s were mixed, they helped brought funding back to AI development after the first AI winter in the 70s. The History of AI marks the Strategic Computer Initative as an important event in AI due to its revival of AI in the US. The SCI towards its ends also indicated a second AI winter.
