Artificial intelligence: The Most Remarkable Milestones Achieved So Far 

Artificial intelligence, also known as machine learning, is the field of computer sciences where a machine is trained with sets of data to understand and learn the difference between every element of a set. This then makes the machine understand and recognize the same pattern every time it completes the process. Hence, the machine, which understands zeros and ones, becomes artificially intelligent.  

In this current decade, the trend of AI is very prominent. Modern problem solvers are implementing new logic to build systems with intelligence, which reserve the goal of utilizing technology in accordance with human needs. We have been observing the changing era of information technology, as AI is reshaping the future of the next generation. AI is not a recent term but has in fact been around for almost a century, and now it has become the most demanding field in the tech industry. 

In 1637, scientist and philosopher Rene Descartes predicted that machines would someday think and make decisions just as humans did.  

In 1956, John McCarthy coined the term “Artificial Intelligence” and organised a summer workshop by inviting field experts together. During a brainstorming session, they laid down a framework to allow the thinking of machines to begin.  

In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum developed the world’s first natural language processing chatbot ELIZA. ELIZA was developed at MIT and was capable of communicating through writing. 

XCON, a digital equipment corporation introduced its first expert learning system in 1980. By 1986 it created an annual saving of $40 million, which led the company to spend $1 billion annually on AI. 

In 1988, a team of researchers from IBM published a statistical approach of predicting the behaviour of nature, based on previous data. With the birth of the internet in 1991, the computers around the world started to get connected, and the advancement in AI along with this helped researchers a lot in improving their products. 

In 1997, IBM deep blue defeated the World Chess champion at that time. This was the biggest achievement in the ’90s for IT, as it was the first time a human brain was defeated by an electronic machine implementing artificial intelligence. In the next decade, work on AI remained in consistent flow, where small to big projects were initiated. In 2011 IBM Watson, a cognitive computing engine won $1 million by defeating a TV game show champion in Jeopardy. 

Jeff Dean, Andrew NG and other scientists at Stanford University and Google published a collective paper. Their research explored unsupervised learning, which does away with the expensive and time-consuming task of manually labelling data before it can be used to train machine learning algorithms. They described a model that can build an artificial network containing around 1 billion connections. 

By 2015, machines become more efficient in visual capability than humans. By 2016, neural networks made history by defeating the World Go champion 5 times. It was found that rather than using brute force algorithms which calculate the chessboard moves, it is more efficient to introduce an artificial neural network to study the game as it played.  

As the year 2018 started there were many headlines emerging on new environmental efficient systems. The introduction of virtual reality to make people feel as though they are in a real environment was one of them. Augmented reality emphasizes the use of a camera with the help of virtual assistance within a real-time situation. Self-driving cars are considered to be the best achievement of this year. Google launched Waymo’s first self-driving taxi in Phoenix, Arizona. It was the first commercial autonomous vehicle hire service and is being used by 400 members of the public who utilize the cabs within an area of 100 square miles.  

With the beginning of 2019, people are expecting more development in the field of AI as the 4th industrial revolution is on the verge. Machines are becoming more and more intelligent with advance data sets. Research in the field of data science is the major concern of every scientist, every new technology traces artificial intelligence to some extent, which is making the world more autonomous and responsive.  

Nadeem Jahangir