- Eliza - 1966
- Animal - 1973
- Noughts and Crosses - 1979
This makes me wonder what has been happening in the last 30 years!
Perhaps I am being unfair, but I don't think that the progress has been good enough.
During that time, there have been huge improvements in processing power, storage, and the availability of data. But I don't think there have been commensurate improvements in AI.
The main AI languages are Lisp and Prolog. These languages (although they have been enhanced over the years) were created in 1958 and 1972 respectively. And although they are still used in research and academia, they never made the crossover into business.
There have been successes, of course, and some of these have passed into the mainstream. One example is OCR which would have fallen under the AI umbrella during its development.
There are also systems that would seem to owe something to AI.
The Ask Jeeves website, for example, seems to be able to "understand" questions that are put to it. Here is an example:
It seems likely that Google Maps uses some kind of AI, particularly in relation to directions.
As I look at my Smartphone, I see some apps that may owe something to AI. Examples are:
- Shazam - which can recognise songs
- Google Goggles - which can recognise books, logos, and works of art
- Voice Command - which can execute simple spoken instructions
Arguably the most obvious milestones in AI over the last 30 years have been:
- IBM's Deep Blue beating Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997
- IBM's Watson beating the two greatest Jeopardy! champions, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, at the quiz show in 2011. A documentary on the latter is available below.