• ⏀ George Boole (1815-1864)

    George Boole

    Boolean Algebra (1847)

    George Boole created Boolean algebra, which is essential for making computer programs work. It's like the rules computers follow to understand yes/no or true/false decisions.

  • 🤖 Alan Turing (1912-1954)

    Alan Turing

    Turing Machine (1936), Turing Test (1950)

    Alan Turing thought of a machine that could solve any problem a computer can if it had the right instructions. He also came up with a test to see if a computer could pretend to be human.

    • Language Skills: The machine should understand and respond naturally and appropriately.
    • Thinking and Solving: The machine should solve problems and think logically like a human.
    • Creativity: The machine should create new and original ideas.
    • Emotions: The machine should recognize and respond to emotions.
    • Learning: The machine should know a lot and learn from new experiences.

  • ☎️ Claude Shannon (1916-2001)

    Claude Shannon

    Information Theory (1948)

    Claude Shannon's work made it possible for us to send and store data efficiently. While working for Bell Labs on their telephone network, he designed and implemented a complete digital encoding technique. Think about texting or watching videos online - that's thanks to his ideas!

  • 💻 John Von Neumann (1903-1957)

    John Von Neumann

    Von Neumann Architecture (1945)

    John Von Neumann designed a way to build computers so they could do multiple tasks easily. He based his designs on his observation of how the human brain / body work. This architecture is still used in computers today!

  • ⏰ John McCarthy (1927-2011)

    John McCarthy

    John McCarthy is the person who came up with the term "Artificial Intelligence" (in 1956) and invented a programming language (lisp) that helped researchers develop AI.

    John also initiated the development of time-sharing systems to fairly share expensive computing resources. These practices are now the foundations of the cloud computing industry.

  • 📷 Yann LeCun (1960-)

    Yann LeCun

    Yann LeCun is the Head of AI Research at Meta, his work on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) (1988) helps computers recognize images, like how your phone can identify your face or a car can drive by itself.

  • 🧨 Ilya Sutskever (1985-)

    Ilya Sutskever

    Ilya Sutskever co-founded OpenAI and helped create models (Transformers 2017) that make it possible for AI to understand and generate human language better than ever before.

  • 1950s - The Birth of AI

    1950s

    1956: Dartmouth Conference, birth of AI as a field

    The Dartmouth Conference in 1956 is when scientists officially started the field of AI, where they began exploring how to make machines intelligent.

  • 1960s - Industry Adoption

    1960s

    The 1960s saw the creation of the first industrial robot, Unimate (1961), and ELIZA, the first chatbot (1966) that could carry on a simple conversation with humans.

  • 1970s - New Applications

    1970s

    MYCIN (1972) was an early AI that helped doctors diagnose infections and recommend treatments, showcasing how AI can assist in medicine.

  • 1980s - Computers Get More Human

    1980s

    The 1980s introduced XCON (1980), which helped set up computer systems, and NETtalk (1986), an early AI that could learn to read text aloud.

    The 1980s also saw the birth of personal computers, making technology more accessible to people of all background and ages, like Yann and Ilya. 😃

  • 1990s - AI Begins to Compete

    1990s

    1997: Deep Blue, chess-playing computer defeats world champion

    In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov, showing that AI could compete with and beat humans in complex games.

    The term 'Computerphobia' is coined to describe the rising fear of computers.

  • 2000s - Computers Begin to Predict

    2000s

    2006: Geoffrey Hinton's Deep Belief Networks

    Geoffrey Hinton's work in 2006 on Deep Belief Networks allowed AI to understand patterns and make predictions, paving the way for more advanced AI technologies.

  • 2010s - Real-Time Computer Vision

    2010s

    2012: AlexNet, CNN that won ImageNet competition

    2014: GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks)

    2015: AlphaGo beats professional Go player

    2017: Transformer, Attention Is All You Need

    The 2010s saw major breakthroughs with AlexNet winning the ImageNet competition, GANs creating realistic images, AlphaGo beating a Go champion, and the Transformer model improving language processing.

  • 2020s - AI Creates and Converses

    2020s

    2020: GPT-3, large-scale language model by OpenAI - 7 grade IQ

    2021: AlphaFold, protein folding AI by Google DeepMind

    2022: DALL-E, image generation model by OpenAI

    2023: ChatGPT, conversational AI by OpenAI - high school IQ

    In the 2020s, AI has reached new heights with GPT-3 writing human-like text, AlphaFold solving advanced protein structures, DALL-E creating images from text, and ChatGPT having conversations like a human.

  • 2024 - The Future

    2024

    GPT-5 is expected to have the IQ of a Phd student.

    Where do we go from here?