The History of AI: A Timeline of Artificial Intelligence | Coursera

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In recent years, the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has undergone rapid transformation. Learn more about its development from the 1950s to the present.
The history of AI stretches back to the 1950s, with significant milestones at nearly every decade.
AI began when mathematician Alan Turing conceptualized the possibility of artificial intelligence and developed a means for assessing whether a machine thinks on par with a human, now called the Turing Test.
The term "artificial intelligence" was coined by John McCarthy during the 1956 Dartmouth Conference, where a small group of researchers are largely credited with founding the field.
You can learn more about AI by getting hands-on experience with AI tools and enrolling in a course to build the skills needed to be a part of its future.
The speed at which AI continues to expand is unprecedented, and to appreciate how we got to this present moment, it’s worthwhile to understand how it first began. AI has a long history stretching back to the 1950s, with significant milestones at nearly every decade.
In this article, we’ll review some of the major events that occurred along the AI timeline. Afterward, if you'd like to learn even more about AI, consider taking DeepLearning.AI's AI for Everyone course.
Artificial intelligence evolved over decades through the work of visionary mathematicians, computer scientists, researchers, and engineers. From the earliest theoretical frameworks of the 1950s to the generative AI tools reshaping industries today, the timeline below traces those milestones decade by decade. We'll highlight the key figures, inventions, and ideas that brought us to where we are now. Understanding this history not only gives context to today's AI landscape, but also offers a window into where the technology may be headed next.
In the 1950s, computing machines essentially functioned as large-scale calculators. In fact, when organizations like NASA needed the answer to specific calculations, like the trajectory of a rocket launch, they more regularly turned to human “computers” or teams of women tasked with solving those complex equations [1].
Long before computing machines became the modern devices they are today, a mathematician and computer scientist envisioned the possibility of artificial intelligence. This is where AI's origins really begin.
At a time when computing power was still largely reliant on human brains, the British mathematician Alan Turing imagined a machine capable of advancing far past its original programming. To Turing, a computing machine would initially be coded to work according to that program but could expand beyond its original functions.
At the time, Turing lacked the technology to prove his theory because computing machines had not advanced to that point, but he’s credited with conceptualizing artificial intelligence before it came to be called that. He also developed a means for assessing whether a machine thinks on par with a human, which he called “the imitation game” but is now more popularly called “the Turing test.”
Read more: What Is the Turing Test? Definition, Examples, and More
During the summer of 1956, Dartmouth College mathematics professor John McCarthy invited a small group of researchers from various disciplines to participate in a summer-long workshop focused on investigating the possibility of “thinking machines.”
The group believed, “Every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it” [2]. Due to the conversations and work they undertook that summer, they are largely credited with founding the field of artificial intelligence.
During the summer Dartmouth Conference—and two years after Turing’s death—McCarthy conceived of the term that would come to define the practice of human-like machines. or machines capable of human intelligence. In outlining the purpose of the workshop that summer, he described it using the term it would forever be known as, “artificial intelligence.”
The early excitement that came out of the Dartmouth Conference grew over the next two decades, with early signs of progress coming in the form of a realistic chatbot and other inventions.
Created by the MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966, ELIZA is widely considered the first chatbot and was intended to simulate therapy by repurposing the answers users gave into questions that prompted further conversation—also known as the Rogerian argument.
Weizenbaum believed that rather rudimentary back-and-forth would prove the simplistic state of machine intelligence. Instead, many users came to believe they were talking to a human professional. In a research paper, Weizenbaum explained, “Some subjects have been very hard to convince that ELIZA…is not human.”
Between 1966 and 1972, the Artificial Intelligence Center at the Stanford Research Initiative developed Shakey the Robot, a mobile robot system equipped with sensors and a TV camera, which it used to navigate different environments. The objective in creating Shakey was “to develop concepts and techniques in artificial intelligence [that enabled] an automaton to function independently in realistic environments,” according to a paper SRI later published [3].
While Shakey’s abilities were rather crude compared to today’s developments, the robot helped advance elements in AI, including “visual analysis, route finding, and object manipulation” [4].
After the Dartmouth Conference in the 1950s, AI research began springing up at venerable institutions like MIT, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon. The instrumental figures behind that work needed opportunities to share information, ideas, and discoveries. To that end, the International Joint Conference on AI was held in 1977 and again in 1979, but a more cohesive society had yet to arise.
The American Association of Artificial Intelligence was formed in the 1980s to fill that g