The Boston Globe Letters – Globe Opinion: AI, a means of progress, can do harm if in the wrong hands

The Russian invasion of Ukraine throws into sharp focus many urgent global problems that have been neglected for decades, including cybersecurity, disinformation, trade disparities, and dependence on unreliable and environmentally damaging fossil fuels...

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – Arthur Samuel popularises the term “machine learning”

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – Arthur Samuel popularises the term “machine learning” in 1959 in his article “Some Studies in Machine Learning Using the Game of Checkers”. Arthur L. Samuel was an American computer scientist....

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – the end of the first AI Winter

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – the end of the first AI Winter in 1980. This was due to the adoption of “expert systems” into corporations in the 90s and Japan’s Fifth Generation Computer project. Expert systems are computer systems...

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – Marvin Minsky publishes “The Society of Mind”

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – Marvin Minsky publishes The Society of Mind in 1987. This book is a theoretical description of the mind as a collection of cooperating agents. Marvin Minsky was an American cognitive and computer scientist....

Judea Pearl Wins 2021 BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award

Judea Pearl is the recipient of the fourteenth edition of the ICT Frontiers of Knowledge Award from the Spanish bank group BBVA for “providing a modern foundation to Artificial Intelligence”. The award includes a prize of €400,000 (about...

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – IBM “Watson” defeats 2 Jeopardy! champions

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – IBM “Watson” machine defeats 2 human Jeopardy! champions. The machine went on the show on February 16th, 2011 and faced off against Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, previous winners of the famous game-show. The...

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – The Stanford Heuristic Programming Project introduced expert systems

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – Edward Feigenbaum formally introduces expert systems in 1965. He was a part of the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project, which contained other notable AI pioneers. Edward Feigenbaum is an American computer...

Israel’s former Prime Minister Ehud Barak bets big on emergency app Reporty

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak wants to revolutionize emergency services technology with startup Reporty Homeland Security. The Reporty chairman led the Israeli startup’s latest $5.15 million funding round, which was announced Tuesday. “We...

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – Waseda University builds WABOT-2

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – Waseda University built WABOT-2 in 1984. A follow up to the WABOT-1 they built in 1973, this robot was also anthropomorphic, but improvements were made. The WABOT-2 was a follow-up to the WABOT-1 project....