Imagine a world where machines think like humans. This dream, once confined to mythology and science fiction, is now the driving force behind artificial Intelligence. While researchers didn’t coin the term “artificial intelligence” until the 1950s, the quest to create intelligent machines is centuries old. From the mythical Hephaestus forging mechanical servants in his Olympian workshop to Leonardo da Vinci sketching plans for a mechanical knight, the potential of artificial beings has long captivated humans.

But these early visions were often limited by the technology of their time. It wasn’t until a wave of mathematical and scientific breakthroughs in the 19th and 20th centuries that the dream of AI began to take shape. Think of George Boole’s Boolean algebra, a seemingly abstract concept that would later become the foundation for the logical reasoning of computers. In the 1930s, Alan Turing developed the concept of a universal computing machine, which would become crucial for the development of modern computers and AI.

The term “artificial intelligence” itself was coined in 1956 at the Dartmouth Conference, marking the official birth of AI as a field of study. Our interactive timeline invites you to explore the fascinating evolution of AI from that pivotal moment onward. The timeline covers the early days of perceptrons and expert systems, and includes challenging “AI winters” and the recent resurgence.

Image sources include Wikipedia, IEEE/the Minsky Family, Adobe Stock, IBM, and various digital archives.