You’d think AI was a new thing based on the way the world has been jumping all over itself. Fresh. Like a baby chicken, coming out of its egg.
It isn’t. It’s like a well-seasoned rooster, constantly crowing into the dark, even when nobody asked…. like 3 AM, after a 24-hour Arch Linux configuration sesh, nobody asked.
You get the idea.
Anyways, Artificial Intelligence, as a field, thought idea, philosophy.. whatever, has been around for quite some time. I would argue that without Ada Lovelace, the idea in the first half of the 20th century would have sounded so preposterous, but then again, I may just think she’s super friggen sweet, and attributing honor where it shouldn’t be.
Back to the first half of the 20th century. You had science fiction CONSTANTLY outputting the idea of a machine, that could feel and think just like a human but wasn’t human.
Side Note: Isn’t that what makes us human? Our ability to feel emotions, and think freely?
You had mathematicians outputting theorems and logic that could lead to a system where a machine COULD think and act like a human.. but alas.. we just weren’t there HARDWARE-wise. But it’s the idea that counts.
Enter the man who no one knew… for a bit.
Alan Turing took the idea already being culturally shared and said “But like… can we do it?”. He focused on utilizing the mathematical possibility of Artificial Intelligence and combining it with the current state of electrical engineering (and what I like to think of as the beginning of Computer Science) and suggested that if humans can take readily available information, sprinkle in some reasoning or logic, and solve problems and make decisions, why can’t a machine do that? This led to his most famous paper “Computer Machinery and Intelligence”.
In the paper, he focused on outlining how an “Intelligent Machine” could be configured, and built. Once built, you would then have to perform a series of tests to figure out their intelligence level. We call these “Turing Tests” or The Imitation Game (not to be confused with the biopic regarding Turing’s life at Belchly Park during WW2, staring the fantastic BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH)
Side note: The incredibly heart-wrenching story of Alan Turing’s life, and the terrible things that were done to him, solely because he was a homosexual, need to be screamed from the rooftops. The fact that we don’t hear about him more in history is a combination of confidential details that were not released until a set period, and the fact that Britain took a LONG time before providing a small gesture in what they had done to him (as well as other men) in the 1920s to 1970s via “Alan Turing Law”. I urge you to read his story, review his paper, and understand that he should be lauded as an LGBTQIA+ icon, and we missed out on decades of Computer Science progress because of other people’s prejudices.
I digress.
Back to the story.
So, we are at a time where the IDEA of artificial intelligence is everywhere, but it’s just… a science fiction story with a little math thrown in. While plans were made to make something that could perform the way that Alan Turing outlined, the technology that was required wasn’t quite there, and it would have been hard to implement something that matched the idea Alan had.
It’s the early 1950s computers, and by computers I mean the physical hardware, not these amazing women, were really dumb.
Like… incredibly dumb in comparison to today’s computers. They could only perform calculations or execute commands. They couldn’t store them yet, which is a big part of being a human (you know, memories and stuff). They were also… HUGE.
Like big huge.
Like this huge:
THEY FILLED UP ROOMS. Yet, their performance would be THOUSANDS (maybe millions? Billions? I don’t know, some big number) of times worse than a shoddy Samsung Galaxy 24 Ultra (come for me androidians, I beg of you, I am an Apple Fanboy and I have drunk the koolaid).
And don’t get me started on the price. They were incredibly expensive, around 100K to 200K a month. JUST TO RENT THEM. That’s like 2,344,589.55 dollars a month in today’s dollars.
for perspective, a house in 1955 cost an average of 8,0000. Computers cost 200K a month to RENT… you didn’t even get to keep it. IT COULDN’T EVEN PLAY DOOM FOR JEEBUS SAKE.
This meant that only big fancy pants companies, the government, and universities had access to or the ability to use computers. Do you think they would allow some random computer science nerd to pick away at one to make it store and understand information? Yea riiiiight.. you’d have a better time convincing parents from the 1980’s that Dungeon & Dragons wasn’t devil worship. Spoiler: it wasn’t
It would take quite some time before we could work on the ability to create a machine, that could store and execute commands, and provide answers to questions it was requested.
So what do? Well, you’d need some extremely smart people to make a concept of a device that could perform similarly to this… and you’d need a surge of support and really really really important smart people to gain traction in this area.. but then… A KING HATH REASON.
I give you: John McCarthy, the godfather of Artificial Intelligence (and computer science, and all kinds of other things):
Look at this handsome son of a gun. He’s rocking the beard.. tippitty typing, all that jazz.
What did he contribute? Well… a whole heck LOT.
but more on that later.. in the next post What even is… AI?: A retrospect, part 2, the electric boogaloo
That’s not what I’m gonna name the next post.. but like.. would you disagree with me if I did?
See ya next time peeps,
Haxk