Monrovia, CA, USA
Artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google . The ultimate search engine that would understand everything on the web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing. We’re nowhere near doing that now. However, we can get incrementally closer to that, and that is basically what we work on.
—Larry Page, the co-founder of Google Inc. and CEO of Alphabet1
In Fredric Brown’s 1954 short story, “Answer,” all of the computers across the 96 billion planets in the universe were connected into one super machine. It was then asked, “Is there a God?” to which it answered, “Yes, now there is a God.”
No doubt, Brown’s story was certainly clever—as well as a bit comical and chilling! Science fiction has been a way for us to understand the implications of new technologies, and artificial intelligence (AI) has been a major theme. Some of the most memorable characters in science fiction involve androids or computers that become self-aware, such as in Terminator, Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and even Frankenstein.
But with the relentless pace of new technologies and innovation nowadays, science fiction is starting to become real. We can now talk to our smartphones and get answers; our social media accounts provide us with the content we’re interested in; our banking apps provide us with reminders; and on and on. This personalized content creation almost seems magical but is quickly becoming normal in our everyday lives.
To understand AI, it’s important to have a grounding in its rich history. You’ll see how the development of this industry has been full of breakthroughs and setbacks. There is also a cast of brilliant researchers and academics, like Alan Turing, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, and Geoffrey Hinton, who pushed the boundaries of the technology. But through it all, there was constant progress.
Let’s get started.
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