by Admin | Jun 26, 2022 | Chronicles, News
This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – The UN Charter Day Roundtable: A Social Contract in the Age of AI and Intellectual Society was hosted on June 26, 2020.
The roundtable was an event of the UN to discuss the Social Contract 2020 (A New Social Contract in the Age of AI), as well as other new concepts and terms such as “Intellectual Society.” Participants of this roundtable were Governor Michael Dukakis, Nguyen Anh Tuan, professors Thomas Patterson, Nazli Choucri, Alex Pentland, and David Silbersweig. The moderator was Ramu Damodaran, Chief of United Nations Academic Impact, Editor in Chief of The United Nations Chronicle.
This roundtable, 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.
by Admin | Jun 19, 2022 | Chronicles, News
This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – the Dartmouth Conference began on 18 June 1956. This gathering would run through the entire summer at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
The Dartmouth Conference was originally dreamt up by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon. They envisioned a workshop to connect computer and information sciences with the brain. In addition to asking for funding, they also determined that Dartmouth College was the location to host such event.
At the actual event, various attendees came and go throughout the (approximate) eight weeks the workshop ran for. On weekdays, the participants had the top floor of the Mathematics Department at Dartmouth College to present their ideas, as well as having general discussions held. Participants and members (outside of the authors) of the discussions and presentations included, but not limited to, Ray Solomonoff, Arthur Samuel, Herbert Simon, Allen Newell, and Oliver Selfridge.
This event marks one of the beginnings of AI – the conception of what AI is and AI could be. Without a seminal event like this, AI would not exist or may have taken a different direction entirely. Thus, the HAI project considers the Conference an event in the History of AI.
by Admin | Jun 9, 2022 | Chronicles, News
This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – Edward Feigenbaum, Bruce G. Buchanan, Joshua Lederberg, and Carl Djerassi began work on Dendral in 1965. This was an AI project that later also became the first expert system.
Edward Feigenbaum is an American computer scientist focused on Artificial Intelligence. He studied at Carnegie Mellon University for both his B.S. and Ph.D., with Herbert Simon, an AI pioneer, as his doctoral advisor. He would go on to work at UC Berkeley and Stanford, the latter where he became Professor Emeritus of Computer Science (since 2000). Feigenbaum received the ACM Turing Award in 1994 with Raj Reddy for pioneering in AI and demonstrating its commercial potential.
Dendral was deveveloped at Stanford beginning in 1965, after the question “Can machines think?” became popularized. Led by Edward Feigenbaum, Bruce G. Buchanan, Joshua Lederberg, and Carl Djerassi, and assisted by associates and students, the project sought to study hypothesis formation and discovery in science. “Dendral” is a portmanteau of “Dendritic Algorithm”. Many expert systems that came after, such as XCON, were derived from Dendral.
The beginning of this project is considered an event in the history of AI due to the project itself contributing much to the development of AI. Dendral itself was both a culmination of past AI interests and the sparking of new ones. Thus, the HAI initiative sees the project as a marker in the history of AI.
by Admin | Jun 4, 2022 | Chronicles, News
This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – Judea Pearl receives the ACM Turing Award 2011 on 16 June, 2012. He was chosen by ACM for his contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence, most notably probabilistic and causal reasoning.
The Turing Award is one of the most prestigious awards in the field, often considered the Nobel Prize of Computer Science. ACM, the Association for Computer Machinery, began giving out the award in 1966, whose first recipient was Alan Perlis. The award was named after Alan Turing, who is widely considered the father of computer science and Artificial Intelligence. Other winners include Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Yoshua Bengio, Geofrrey Hinton, and Yann LeCun, all that made enormous contributions to computer science and Artificial Intelligence.
Judea Pearl is a renowned Israeli-American computer scientist. He is a pioneer into Baynesian networks, probabilistic approaches to AI, and causal inference. He is also known for his books, Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems (1988), Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference (2000), and The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect (2018). Pearl is a Chancellor’s Professor at UCLA.
Due to the impact that Judea Pearl had on Artificial Intelligence, specifically in terms of Causal Inference, the History of AI initiative considers it an important marker in AI history. Professor Judea Pearl is one of the most influential computer scientists around the world. He is also a Mentor of AI World Society Innovation Network (AIWS.net). Professor Pearl resides on the History of AI Board. He was honored as 2020 World Leader in AI World Society by Michael Dukakis Institute and the Boston Global Forum.
by Admin | May 28, 2022 | Chronicles, News
This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – MIT receives a $2.2 million grant in June 1963 from DARPA, which was used to fund project MAC. This project included the AI Group of Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy.
DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a research and development agency of the American Department of Defense. It was founded on orders of President Eisenhower on February 7, 1958. The agency is responsible for helping the military develop emerging technologies. DARPA became a major sponsor of AI development, an example being the Strategic Computing Initiative.
Marvin Minsky was an American cognitive and computer scientist. 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 in 1956. Minsky would also make significant contributions to artificial intelligence, both in the study of the field and in popular culture.
He won the Turing Award in 1969. John McCarthy was an American computer scientist. He, along with Minsky and others, co-wrote the proposal for the Dartmouth Conference, and participated in it. McCarthy also developed the Lisp programming language. He spent most of his career at Stanford after working at Dartmouth and MIT. McCarthy won the Turing Award in 1971.
The HAI initiative considers this development an event in the history of AI, due to this funding allowing pioneers of the field to further their work and research. Most notably, MIT, Minsky, and McCarthy have contributed much to the advancement of artificial intelligence and other adjacent fields in computer science.
