Thomas Haigh

The history of artificial intelligence (AI) is the history of an intellectual brand, now almost seven decades old, that has somehow survived cycles of hype, disillusion, contestation, and redefinition to reemerge stronger than ever. The project aims to historicize artificial intelligence and move beyond the narratives of its proponents and the counter claims of its historical critics. Because the artificial intelligence brand has been applied over time to fundamentally different approaches, this will be a short history that speaks to many long histories. The history of artificial intelligence is the history of the unfulfilled promise that computers can be programmed to do the things that make humans uniquely intelligent, a promise that stays unfulfilled in part because we constantly redefine intelligence to exclude things that computers become good at. And it is the history of an actual existing academic discipline––with textbooks, college curricula, journals and professional associations––that tried to assemble a body of techniques and technologies sufficient to justify the hype and redeem the promise.