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Stage 1 · Beginner · F7

Where AI Came From

The first AI researchers asked for one summer. The work is now seventy years old.

15 lessons · 120 minGentle

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About this chapter

Artificial intelligence has meant very different machines since 1956. This chapter follows the two camps that took turns leading: people who wrote the rules by hand, and people who let machines learn from examples. You will step through a game tree the way chess programs think ahead, race a blind search against A*, make an expert system get stuck, and see why the money ran out twice. Then come the turns that built today's AI: data and chips in 2012, attention in 2017, chat in 2022, and Arabic models from the Gulf. You finish with a short checklist for reading AI news without the hype.

What you will be able to do

  1. 1

    What People Mean by AI

    Say what the words artificial intelligence have meant over seventy years, and name the two ways people have tried to build it.

    7 min
  2. 2

    Rules Written by Hand

    Describe what the first AI researchers set out to do in 1956, and how a program that follows hand-written rules works.

    8 min
  3. 3

    Thinking Ahead

    Carry scores up a game tree with minimax, and say why a program plans for its rival's best reply.

    9 min
  4. 4

    The Shortest Way There

    Explain how A* uses a guess of the distance left to search far fewer places than a blind search, and still find the shortest route.

    8 min
  5. 5

    Experts in a Box

    Describe an expert system, what MYCIN and XCON did with one, and how a rule engine reaches a conclusion.

    8 min
  6. 6

    The Knowledge Bottleneck

    Explain why expert systems stalled: rules are slow to collect, never complete, and start to clash as they grow.

    8 min
  7. 7

    Two Winters

    Tell the story of the second AI winter, and name the pattern both winters share.

    8 min
  8. 8

    Learning from Examples Instead

    Trace the examples camp from the perceptron to 1986, and say why it still had to wait for its moment.

    7 min
  9. 9

    Games as Milestones

    Compare how Deep Blue won at chess in 1997 with how AlphaGo won at Go in 2016.

    9 min
  10. 10

    Data and Chips

    Explain what changed around 2012: a huge labeled dataset, graphics chips, and an old idea trained deeper.

    8 min
  11. 11

    Attention and Scale

    Place the 2017 transformer and the bet on scale that followed it, and say what stayed the same underneath.

    8 min
  12. 12

    Chat Goes Public

    Say what was new when ChatGPT opened in November 2022, and what was already years old.

    7 min
  13. 13

    AI in the Arab World

    Name the Arabic-first models Jais and ALLaM, and the national plans behind AI in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

    9 min
  14. 14

    What It Can and Cannot Do

    Say where today's models are strong, where they are weak, and when an answer needs checking.

    8 min
  15. 15

    Reading AI News Without the Hype

    Ask four questions of any AI headline: what it does today, compared with what, who checked it, and how much a dated promise is worth.

    8 min

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