Page 116 - Computer - 5

• 1950: Alan Turing, an English mathematician, pioneered Machine

learning. He published his theory, Computing Machinery and
Intelligence in which he proposed a test called the Turing Test,
that can check a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour.

The Turing test was the first experiment proposed to measure
the intelligence of machines. Alan Turing

THE BIRTH OF AI (1952-1956)
This period saw growing interest in the field of creating intelligent machines.
With the advancement of computers and programming languages, computer
scientists began to play an important role in the development of AI. High-level
computer languages, such as FORTRAN, LISP, and COBOL, are invented. The
enthusiasm for AI was very high during this time.
The key achievements during this period are:
• 1952: Checkers was the first program to demonstrate that computers can
learn and not just perform what they are programmed to do. Checkers

attracted media attention and learned to play at a level high enough to
challenge a decent amateur human player.
• 1955: Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, and Herbert A. Simon created
the ‘first artificial intelligence program’, named Logic Theorist.
This program successfully proved 38 of 52 basic Mathematics
theorems and found new and more elegant proofs for some
theorems.

• 1956: The American computer scientist John McCarthy coined
the term Artificial Intelligence at the Dartmouth Conference.
AI is categorised as an academic and scientific field. He also
developed LISP, a programming language for developing AI on John McCarthy
computers.

THE EARLY YEARS (1956-1970)
This period is considered the golden period for development of AI as many computer
scientists, large corporations, and universities started pursuing projects involving AI.
Some milestones of this period are:

• 1961: Machine Educable Nougats And Crosses Engine (MENACE) was one of
the first programs capable of learning to play a perfect game of Tic-Tac-Toe.
• 1966: Joseph Weizenbaum created the first chatbot, which was named ELIZA.
It was a natural language processing system that imitated a doctor. ELIZA
responded to questions like a psychotherapist. It used pre-recorded responses
based on keywords in the responses of the users to give advice on common
anxiety-related problems.

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