Artificial Intelligence All-in-One For Dummies

Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) is generally defined as the theory and development of computer systems that can do tasks that normally require human intelligence.

In the early days of what we now call AI, the idea of a mechanical brain existed in the heads of science fiction writers and a few visionaries such as Edmund Callis Berkeley, who wrote “Giant Brains, or Machines that Think” (1949) and Alan Turing, who wrote “Computer Machinery and Intelligence” (1950).

In his famous paper, Turing proposed a test of machine intelligence called the “Imitation Game,” which is known today as the Original Turing Test. The test proposed a party game in which a man and a woman are interrogated by a third party in another room whose goal is to determine which person is the man and which is the woman. Turing then asked whether it would be possible for a digital computer to do well as the interrogator in this game.

In another version of the Turing Test, known today as the “Standard Turing Test,” a human judge evaluates a text transcript of a conversation between a human and a machine and attempts to determine which is which. I recommend you try playing this game at home with ChatGPT or another AI chatbot. Let me know if anyone was fooled by the chatbot. (You can email me at [e-mail].)

It wasn’t until the early 2020s that we had AI capable of passing a modern version of the Standard Turing Test. Whether this means that we truly have machines that can think as we do is hotly ...