History of AI: Part 1 - The Golem's Ghost: A Brief Overview of the History of AI

Show Notes: The Golem's Ghost: A Brief History of AI

In this episode, we kick off our four-part series on the History of AI! Host Dr. JR and resident academic Dr. Aris "Rusty" Thorne journey back to the very beginning, exploring the bold dreamers and the first spark of artificial intelligence.

What We Discuss:

• The Golem's Ghost: We dive into the mythical origins of creating artificial life and how it connects to a very real, very early AI program named "The Golem".
• The Turing Test as a Barroom Bet: We reframe Alan Turing's famous "Imitation Game" from a formal test to a philosophical thought experiment two nerds would argue about over drinks.
• The Birth of a Term: Learn how the term "Artificial Intelligence" was officially coined in a 1956 workshop at Dartmouth College, where a group of researchers believed they could solve the problem of AI in just two months.
• The Mark I Perceptron: Discover the statistical tidbit about this early neural network, a physical machine that mimicked the human brain and had a computing power less than a modern digital watch.
• AI's Unintended Consequences: We get into a recent news story about "AI psychosis" and the real-world implications of people forming emotional bonds with chatbots.
• The End of the Beginning: We close by hinting at the next episode, when the audacious dreams of AI go into a "healthy recalibration"—what some might call "rock bottom."

Further Reading & Resources:

• "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" by Alan Turing
• The Dartmouth Workshop Proposal by John McCarthy