Time Line of 'Significant Events' in Artificial Intelligence Research

1936

Alan Turing considers the brain as a way of looking at computing.

1943

Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts modelled a simple neural network.

1947

Arthur Samuel from IBM began work on a program to play 'Checkers' that was capable of learning from its mistakes.

1950

Alan Turing (the 'Father of AI') and designer of the first electronic computer 'Colossus', publishes 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence', which suggests that machines may someday 'compete with men in all purely intellectual pursuits'. IBM also begin working on simulated neural networks

1956

A Summer conference in Hanover, New Hampshire of mathematicians, neurologists, psychiatrists and electrical engineers. John McCarthy (a Maths prof.) first proposes the term 'Artificial Intelligence'.

1957

Prediction by Rand Corporation that 'within 10 years a digital computer will be the worlds chess champion, unless rules ban it from competition' (still not achieved to date).

1958

LISP (LISt Processing language), the most commonly used AI research language introduced by John McCarthy. US Defence Department forms Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) - military applications for AI to be explored with large injection of funds.

1959

Widrow and Hoff develop 'ADALINE' and 'MADALINE' as the first neural networks in real life application (they filtered noise and echoes from phone lines)

1961

Arthur Samuel consistently beaten by his own 'checkers' program

1962

The Perceptron neural network model proposed by Rosenblatt (uses corrective learning).

1963

'Eliza', a natural language program by Joseph Weizenbaum of Massachusetts Institute of Technology used to simulate diagnosis by a psychiatrist

1965

Feigenbaum, Buchanan and Lederberg work on an 'if..then' program to assist in analysing spectrograph data. The result 'DENDRAL', is the first expert system.

1967

Grossberg developed the Avalanche series of neural networks which were able to control robot arms and perform speech recognition.

1968

'SIR' (Semantic Information Retrieval) - a program that could make deductions from facts written by Bert Raphael

1969

'Shakey' - an ambulatory robot debuts at Stanford university -equipped with range finder, television camera, on-board logic, bump detector and antennae for radio linkage Minskey and Papert (author of LOGO) conclude that the Perceptron is unable to solve any useful problems.

1970

'CASNET' - an expert system for diagnosis and treatment of Glaucoma

1971

'MACSYMA' - an expert system to perform differential and integral calculus better than most human experts.

1972

PROLOG is introduced as an artificial intelligence language.

1975

'MYCIN' - an expert system that could diagnose bacterial infections on the basis of symptoms (used 400 rules)

1976

'Hearsay' - a speech understanding program, as part of a five year project sponsored by DARPA

1979

'BKG 9.8' - a backgammon program defeats the world champion winning $US5000 for its author Hans Berliner.

1981

Expert systems 'ONCOCIN' (cancer treatment), 'SAM' (brain haemorrhages and high blood pressure treatment), 'DART' (computer breakdown support), 'R1' (computer system configuration), 'DIPMETER' (geological layer analysis) and 'SIMMIAS' (oil prospecting)

1982

DARPA outlines a 20-year plan for AI defence systems on earth and in space.

1985

'Q&A' - the first 'natural language' PC database, by Symantec.

1988

'VoiceReport' - a voice activated computer system capable of dictation with a 5000 word vocabulary by Kurzweil Applied Intelligence.

1989

'KBMS' (Knowledge Base Management System), released for the PC by Artificial Intelligence Corp, allows users to construct expert systems. Neural networks for Defence meeting (re-focus on the Perceptron)

1990

Targeted as the date for Japans Fifth Generation Project to be integrated into small businesses and homes, as well as businesses and corporations - not realised to date.