by Sean Dow

Created on: August 01, 2008   Last Updated: September 08, 2009

Much research on the concept of artificial intelligence has gone on over the years. Much of this research has also been the development of many important theories. The concept of artificial intelligence as a real possibility was suggested by a man called Samuel Butler, although he didn't call it artificial intelligence', he referred to it as "mechanical consciousness" and described it as a type of natural, technological evolution. This concept utilized classic Darwinian Evolution, applied to a machine's thought.

The most intelligent machines would survive, while others would shut down (Butler). The modern-day field of artificial intelligence truly began at a summer conference in 1956 at Dartmouth College. Here the soon-to-be leaders of the field met and discussed their theories (Creveir 47-49). Four of these were John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert Simon. These researchers founded the AI laboratories at Stanford, MIT, and CMU. Marvin Minsky made a prediction, "Within a generation the problem of creating artificial intelligence' will substantially solved" (Minsky 2).

Unfortunately, he was wrong, at least so far. That generation time-limit he put for his prediction is coming to a close very rapidly, and we are still far from realizing true artificial intelligence. For decades, the field has had some jumps, then a long winter of sorts. This is mostly due to a lack of funding. We now have lesser versions of artificial intelligence; however they are confined in their thinking by programming problems and are for very specific uses only, such as watching factory machinery and finding problems in it.

Although the field still has its problems and failures like all new fields of research, the field of artificial intelligence has indeed seen some success. On May 11, 1997, a computer built by the company IBM, dubbed "Deep Blue", played chess against the world chess champion Garry Kasparov and won a six-game match by two wins to one win and three stalemates. Deep Blue was the first computer to ever win a chess game against a world champion; although it failed the first match, it was the second match that Deep Blue won after being upgraded (Hsu). However, after the match, Deep Blue was retired and disassembled.

One of the main problems currently hindering the field of artificial intelligence is not in fact human innovation or current technology. It is a lack of funding to build and test these machines. People are afraid to fund such a risky field, but

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