In July 1956, Carnegie Mellon’s Herb Simon and Allen Newell presented what is considered the first AI computer program at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. Called the “Logic Theorist,” it was designed to mimic human reasoning by proving theorems in math, a narrow goal indeed. Simon and Newell soon followed it with a broader and grandly named “General Problem Solver.” And so, the field of applied AI was born 70 years ago.
As a historical aside, I knew both Simon and Newell in the mid ’70s when I was on the CMU faculty. In fact, they ran an innovation grant program that funded my hand-done book on the structure and measurement of complex issues and reasoning.
See http://stemed.info/reports/Wojick_Issue_Analysis_txt.pdf
I am on the “I” side of AI, studying human reasoning because we cannot make computers emulate what we do not understand.
Simon got a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978, even though he never did any economics. They do not have a prize for inventing new fields like AI, but they are flexible.
AI has made steady progress. Here are a few big milestones.
In 1996, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated the reigning world chess champion.
In 2011, IBM’s Watson beat two champions combined in Jeopardy. Question answering became the basis for today’s amazing AI chatbots.
Chat GPT was launched in 2022 and here we are.
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