The idea of building a machine that could think like a human has existed since ancient times. Greek philosophers such as Aristotle wrote about logic and the rules of reasoning. Later, mathematicians like Leibniz and George Boole tried to express human logic in mathematical form. In the 20th century, Alan Turing, who is known as the father of computer science, published a famous paper in 1950 titled “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.”
He asked the question: “Can machines think?” To measure machine intelligence, he proposed the Turing Test—if a person could not tell whether they were talking to a machine or a human, the machine would be considered intelligent. These ideas laid the scientific foundation for artificial intelligence.
The official birth of artificial intelligence took place in 1956, when a conference was held at Dartmouth College in the United States. At this conference, John McCarthy introduced the term “Artificial Intelligence”, which is why he is known as the “father of AI.” Other key pioneers included Marvin Minsky, Herbert Simon, and Allen Newell, who created programs that could solve mathematical problems and even play chess.
Following these early successes, the first golden age of AI began (1956–1974). During this time, programs such as the Logic Theorist, which solved logical problems, and ELIZA (1966), an early chatbot simulating a psychotherapist, were created.
There was great optimism that machines would soon reach human-level intelligence. However, due to the limited power of computers and technical challenges, these dreams could not be realized, and research funding decreased. This period became known as the “AI Winter.”
In the 1980s, interest in AI returned, this time focusing on expert systems—programs designed to act like specialists in particular fields. These systems were applied in medicine and industry with some success, but once again high costs and limitations led to another decline in enthusiasm.
During the 1990s and 2000s, a new wave of progress emerged. In 1997, IBM’s computer Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov, a major milestone in AI history.
At the same time, the rise of the internet and the availability of Big Data empowered machine learning algorithms, giving AI much greater power.
Artificial intelligence began to play key roles in search engines, email spam filtering, machine translation, and robotics.
From 2010 onward, a new era known as deep learning began. Inspired by the structure of the human brain, artificial neural networks achieved breakthroughs in image recognition, speech recognition, language translation, and self-driving cars.
Companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI became leaders in this revolution. Today, we see autonomous vehicles, intelligent robots, advanced medical systems, and large language models like GPT, which can converse and generate human-like text.
In summary, artificial intelligence has traveled a long and challenging road: from philosophical ideas in ancient times, to Alan Turing’s scientific foundations, to its official birth at the Dartmouth Conference in 1956, through periods of growth and “AI winters,” and finally to the modern era of deep learning. Today, AI is no longer just a dream—it is an essential part of our daily lives and will profoundly shape the future of humanity.
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