Hello SIGCIS,

 

CACM recently put up the online version of the fifth and final part in my history of AI series, which has been appearing slowly over the past year and a half. These add up to a very short history of AI from 1955 to the present.

 

  1. Conjoined Twins: Artificial Intelligence and the Invention of Computer Science," Communications of the ACM 66:6 (June, 2023):33-37. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3593007   
  2. "There Was No 'First AI Winter'," Communications of the ACM 66:12 (December 2023):35-39. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3625833
  3. "How the AI Boom Went Bust," Communications of the ACM 67:2 (February 2024):22-26.  https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3634901
  4. "Between the Booms: AI in Winter," Communications of the ACM 67:11 (November 2024):18-23. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3688379
  5. “Artificial Intelligence Then and Now,” Communications of the ACM 68:2 (February 2025). https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/artificial-intelligence-then-and-now/

 

A somewhat less short (circa 50K words) version of this story will be appearing as an MIT Press book with the working title Artificial Intelligence: The History of a Brand. Other than more detail, context, and human background a main difference is that each short chapter in the book features a relatively detailed case study of a classic AI-branded system. This is a short history of AI in all senses, focusing on the brand itself and the relationship of AI to the development of computer science as a discipline. Given the huge industry focused on writing about modern AI the focus is almost exclusively on AI prior to the recent boom, with a brief discussion of contemporary approaches there primarily as a contrast.

 

In all formats, I’ve been making an effort to showcase a variety of interesting work that’s been appearing on the topic from younger scholars over the last few years.

 

In November I was at the IWM in Vienna as the Senior Digital Humanism fellow. While in town I also agreed to teach a compressed graduate course for the compute science students at the technical university, using a draft of the book as the core text. You can see the syllabus at https://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/TUW

 

If anyone is interested in trying out a newer draft of the book for teaching in the summer or fall then let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

 

Best wishes,

 

Tom

 

Thomas Haigh

Professor & Chair, History Department, University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee

Chair, IEEE Computer Society History Committee

Director, ACM History Committee Turing Awards Project

See more at www.tomandmaria.com/Tom