AI & I

One of AI’s earliest and most respected pioneers offers a concise, illuminating history of artificial intelligence—and champions a deep learning approach for future developments.

AI & I is an intellectual history of the field of artificial intelligence from the perspective of one of its first practitioners, Eugene Charniak. Charniak entered the field in 1967, roughly 12 years after AI’s founding, and was involved in many of AI’s formative milestones. In this book, he traces the trajectory of breakthroughs and disappointments of the discipline up to the current day, clearly and engagingly demystifying this oft revered and misunderstood technology. His argument is controversial but well supported: that classical artificial intelligence has been almost uniformly unsuccessful and that the modern deep learning approach should be viewed as the foundation for all the exciting developments that are to come.

Written for the scientifically educated layperson, this book chronicles the history of the field of artificial intelligence, starting with its origin in 1956, as a topic for a small academic workshop held at Dartmouth University. From there, the author covers reasoning and knowledge representation, reasoning under uncertainty, chess, computer vision, speech recognition, language acquisition, deep learning, and learning writ large. Ultimately, Charniak takes issue with the controversy of AI—the fear that its invention means the end of jobs, creativity, and potentially even humans as a species—and explains why such concerns are unfounded. Instead, he believes that we should embrace the technology and all its potential to benefit society.TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword 7
Preface and Conclusion 9
1 Beginnings (1956–1970) 13
2 Reasoning and Knowledge Representation (1970–1985) 31
4 Chess (1965–1997) 61
5 Computer Vision (1970–2000) 67
6 Speech Recognition (1971–1985) 79
7 Learning Language (1985–2010) 91
8 Deep Learning (1989–2016) 101
9 Reinforcement Learning and the Game of Go (1990–2017) 119
10 Learning Writ Large (2017–2023) 129
11 AI, Present and Future (2023) 149“Eugene Charniak’s AI & I: An Intellectual History of Artificial Intelligence is an accessible primer on not just the history but also the how of artificial intelligence (AI) and essential reading for those trying to understand this moment in AI.”
—H-Net Reviews“To understand the landscape of AI today, there is no better guide than Eugene Charniak, who was a leader in the entire journey, from old-fashioned AI to probabilistic reasoning to today's large language models.”
—Peter Norvig, Research Director, Google; author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach

“Charniak's reflections are filled with insight, lighthearted, and thought-provoking. Highly recommended!”
—Ellen Riloff, Professor of Computer Science, University of Arizona

“Eugene Charniak takes us on a uniquely personal journey through AI history, intertwining memoir with masterful teaching. His passion and curiosity illuminate each concept, enlightening and delighting the reader at every turn.”
—Eric Horvitz, Chief Scientific Officer, MicrosoftEugene Charniak was Professor of Computer Science and Cognitive Science at Brown University. His primary research area was language processing, particularly in the context of probabilistic and deep learning models. He passed away in July 2023.