A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence

From Oxford’s leading AI researcher comes a fun and accessible tour through the history and future of one of the most cutting edge and misunderstood field in science: Artificial Intelligence

The somewhat ill-defined long-term aim of AI is to build machines that are conscious, self-aware, and sentient; machines capable of the kind of intelligent autonomous action that currently only people are capable of. As an AI researcher with 25 years of experience, professor Mike Wooldridge has learned to be obsessively cautious about such claims, while still promoting an intense optimism about the future of the field. There have been genuine scientific breakthroughs that have made AI systems possible in the past decade that the founders of the field would have hailed as miraculous. Driverless cars and automated translation tools are just two examples of AI technologies that have become a practical, everyday reality in the past few years, and which will have a huge impact on our world.

While the dream of conscious machines remains, Professor Wooldridge believes, a distant prospect, the floodgates for AI have opened. Wooldridge’s A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence is an exciting romp through the history of this groundbreaking field—a one-stop-shop for AI’s past, present, and world-changing future.

Author Biography

Michael Wooldridge is a professor of Computer Science and Head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford. Since earning his Ph.D. in AI, he has published more than 350 scientific articles on the subject. Mike has been at the heart of the AI community for a quarter of a century and knows most of the key figures in the international AI community. He has been president of the International Association for AI since 2015 and is a fellow of the American Association for AI. He has a long track record of public speaking and science communication on AI matters and related topics.