The journey of AI to contemporary optimism and fear

The origin of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is considered to be 1956, when the term began to be used in connection with the development of computers that would be as intelligent as humans. At the time, researchers believed it would take less than a generation to fulfill that vision. Since then, periods of optimism and periods of cooling interest in AI (also called AI winter) have alternated.

Today, after 65 years, we are for the third time in a period of high expectations of artificial intelligence, and the topic of general artificial intelligence, which would be able to solve any problem, has returned. To understand the future, it is useful to look back.

Lecture by prof. Mária Bieliková provides answers to the questions of how this discipline and understanding of the concept of artificial intelligence developed, what were the main milestones that pushed her further. Why did people start to fear artificial intelligence and what made them to add ethics related topics to AI?

At the same time, in today’s divided world and a growing number of people who stop believing in the facts, technology, and in particular artificial intelligence, also has a role to play. Even today, technologies are created by people, in the case of artificial intelligence they define what artificial intelligence optimizes and find possibilities for the application of individual solutions.

But what if we don’t quite understand what is being optimized? And what about Slovakia? How has artificial intelligence developed in Slovakia and what are the current challenges?

We bring you a recording of the lecture of prof. Mária Bieliková (available in Slovak only), which was created in cooperation with the Center for Scientific and Technical Information.