Artificial Intelligence
----------------------- A brief primer for the web enabled, compiled by Josh Hale (14/09/03) ------------
Links:
The AAAI (American Association for Artificial Intelligence) provides a broad background and a number of interesting links relating to the history, background and motivations in AI. The following may be useful starting points: http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/bbhist.html (Chronological history of AI)
http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/history.html (History of AI)
http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/robots.html (Robotics)
The following extended essay (part of a book) is gives a broad introduction to AI (philosophical aspects, chronology, people and technical aspects) and is more suitable for offline perusal:
http://www.compapp.dcu.ie/~tonyv/Textbook/history.html (Introductory essay)
Here is a painfully minimal chronology, list of important names and technical concepts that might provide an inspiration for further investigation: ------------
Historical Myth: Talos (bronze automaton warder of Crete), created by Hephaestus (Greek mythology) 500 BC Aristotle invents formal logic / deductive reasoning Myth,
1580: Rabbi Loe animated the Golem (clay zobie of Prague)
1651 Leviathan, written by Thomas Hobbes (1588?1679), was published. In it he proposes that humans collectively, by virtue of their organization and use of their machines, would create a new intelligence. George B. Dyson refers to Hobbes as the patriarch of artificial intelligence in his book, "Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence," p7, 1997.
17th C Leibnitz and Pascal invented mechanical computing devices. Pascal was 19 years old in 1642 when he invented an eight-digit calculator, the Pascaline. In 1694, Gottfried Liebnitz invented the Liebnitz Computer, which multiplied by repetitive addition, an algorithm still in use today. Leibnitz also conceived of a 'reasoning calculator' for interpreting and evaluating concepts, but realized the problem was immense because of the great interconnectedness of concepts.
1811 Luddite movement founded
1847 George Boole developed a mathematical symbolic logic (later called Boolean algebra) for reasoning about categories (i.e., sets) of objects, which is also applicable to manipulating and simplifying logical propositions.
1928 John von Neumann introduced the minimax theorem, which is still used as a basis for game-playing programs.
1931 Kurt Godel demonstrated that math theorems we know to be true can be unprovable. This means that humans can recognize the true meaning of some sentences but the truth of them can't be derived by any logical system.
1946 von Neumann publishes paper on "the stored program"
1946: Eckert & Mauchley build "ENIAC", the first electronic programmable digital computer
7 June 1954 Turing suicided in mysterious circumstances by eating a cyanide-laced apple following a conviction for homosexuality in 1953.
1957 Noam Chomsky, a linguist at MIT, postulated that language could be analyzed without reference to its content or meaning. In other words, syntax was independent of semantics. This concept was enticing to AI people as it would mean knowledge could be represented and analyzed without knowing anything about what was being said. Experience has shown that this concept doesn't apply well to human languages.
1962 First industrial robotics company, "Unimation"
------------Names
Aristotle Charles Babbage difference engine (1821),
analytical engine (1856)
Karel Capek, "robot" (1923)
Alan Turing, Turing test, Turing machine (1950)
Claude Shannon, Informaton theory
Isaac Asimov, 3 laws of robotics, (1950)
Bertrand Russell John von Neumann, minimax theorem,
"father of modern day computing" Arthur C Clarke George Boole (Boolean/Digital logic)
Noam Chomsky
------------Technical concepts
Expert system
Neural network
Fuzzy logic
Fuzzy sets
Knowledge-based systems
Bayesian analysis
Symbolic logic