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Fun Fact About AI History:  For most of us, Artificial Intelligence is a modern, digital world phenomenon, and nobody even thought of AI in the past. However, the reality is far from this. The history of artificial intelligence dates back to the mid-1950s, specifically the key moment in 1955-56, when scientists first started to conceptualise machines that could ‘think’ as humans do. This makes AI almost seven decades old as a theory, which is much older than most people are aware. Now, let’s take a close look at the history and origin of artificial intelligence and the great minds behind it

Computer science expert John McCarthy, in 1955, along with Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon, suggested a conference to investigate the notion of creating simulations of intelligence using machines. The workshop, conducted during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College, is generally regarded as the birth of Artificial Intelligence as a field. It was in this convention that the very name ‘Artificial Intelligence’ was first used by McCarthy to refer to this grand vision, according to the  History of Data Science.

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The thinking at the time was that human logic can be easily imitated by computers. The early AI researchers were all focused on symbolic programming, problem-solving, and logical reasoning, building the foundations of the systems we have today. While evolution during the initial couple of decades was way slower than anyone imagined, these early efforts laid the groundwork for the ideas on which modern AI systems like chatbots, voice assistants, and machine learning algorithms are built. Currently, US-based ChatGPT, powered by OpenAI, is the most used AI, with over 546.15 million monthly active users, across the globe. 

Therefore, if you think of AI as a revolutionary thing, it is. However, the vision of this revolution was sown almost 70 years ago, with small steps through the minds of geniuses who were dreaming up the future.