Tom, congratulations on all this work. I like the strategy you followed of doing it in chunks before rushing to "THE book." The topic is complicated, historical research on it just having gotten started in the past two decades, and the amount of hype out there is colossal. As usual, you do good work so I look forward to reading the book. I have to confess I only read one of the ACM pieces--blame it on too many other things attracting my attention. Jim On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 4:39 PM thomas.haigh--- via Members < members@lists.sigcis.org> wrote:
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
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