? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ???A few milestones in AI history

? Artificial intelligence is the hot topic of our times. The concept is not actually all that new: as long as 1637, the philosopher Descartes thought seriously about the possibility that mathines would one day think and make decisions.

? However, it?wasn't until 1956 that the term?“artificial intelligence” was coined. This was the year Professor John McCarthy proposed the term in the Dartmouth Conference, an event which invited leading experts in the field to discuss their ideas over the subject. Ever since this conference, artificial intelligence has devoloped at a fast pace.

? The first stationary industrial robot was named Unimate and in 1961, it was delivered to the General Motors factory and worked on an assembly line. Other more advanced robots followed soon after: Shakey the robot was invented in late 1960s. As the first general-purpose mobile robot, Shakey combined research in robotics, computer vision, and natural language processing. In 1973, a robotics group at University of Edinburgh built Freddy, the famous Scottish Robot. Freddy was able to assemble wooden models using vision to identify and locate the parts.

? It?wasn't long before machines were able to perform much more complex tasks. In 1997, the chess supercomputer Deep Blue managed to defeat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov. This victory drew public attention to how quickly computers were evolving.

? In 2002, many households around the world were delighted to hear about the invention of a vacuum cleaner robot called Roomba. Roomba?wasn't the first household robot, but she was the first successful model. Electrolux had introduced a robotic vacuum cleaner in 1996, but it experienced frequent problems and didn't sell well.

? If household robots?weren't enough, soon an even more advanced robot would be introduced: an intelligent assistant who would respond to vioce commands. Apple released Siri in 2011, and a wave of similar products has since follewed: Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Alexa and Baidu Duer.

? What's next for AI? If technology continues to develop at this rate, one thing is sure: many more exciting changes are afoot.

(The article come from my textbook)