Interactive Timeline

The History of
Artificial Intelligence

From Turing's question in 1950 to the frontier models of 2026 — and what comes next. Every milestone mapped.

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1950 – 1969

Dawn of AI

The dream begins. Alan Turing asks "Can machines think?" and a handful of visionaries invent a field.

  • Turing Test proposed (1950)
  • Dartmouth Conference coins "AI" (1956)
  • Perceptron neural network (1958)
  • ELIZA chatbot (1966)
Dawn of AI era illustration
AI Winters era illustration
1970 – 1989

AI Winters

Overpromise meets reality. Funding dries up twice as AI fails to deliver on grand predictions.

  • First AI Winter begins (1974)
  • Expert Systems boom (1980)
  • Backpropagation rediscovered (1986)
  • Second AI Winter (1987)
1990 – 2011

Quiet Revolution

While the world looks elsewhere, machine learning matures. Statistical methods replace symbolic AI.

  • Deep Blue defeats Kasparov (1997)
  • Netflix Prize sparks ML competition (2006)
  • ImageNet dataset created (2009)
  • IBM Watson wins Jeopardy! (2011)
Quiet Revolution era illustration
Deep Learning era illustration
2012 – 2022

Deep Learning

Neural networks go from academic curiosity to world-changing technology in a single decade.

  • AlexNet revolution (2012)
  • AlphaGo defeats Lee Sedol (2016)
  • Transformers: "Attention Is All You Need" (2017)
  • GPT-3 shows emergent abilities (2020)
  • DALL-E generates images from text (2021)
  • ChatGPT launches, 100M users in 2 months (Nov 2022)
2023 – Now

Frontier AI

We Are Here

AI becomes infrastructure. Models reason, code, see, and act. The question shifts from "can it?" to "should it?"

  • GPT-4 + Claude 3 redefine capability (2024)
  • Open-source models rival proprietary (2024)
  • AI agents operate computers autonomously (2025)
  • GPT-5.4 + Claude Opus 4.6 (2026)
  • EU AI Act begins enforcement (2026)
Frontier AI era illustration
AGI Era era illustration
2027 – 2030

AGI Era

Predicted

Artificial General Intelligence — machines that learn anything a human can, and faster.

  • Artificial General Intelligence?
  • Autonomous AI scientists
  • AI-designed chip architectures
  • Global AI governance treaty
2030 – 2045

Superintelligence

Predicted

Intelligence beyond human comprehension. AI improves itself in recursive loops.

  • AI surpasses all human expertise
  • Recursive self-improvement
  • Scientific breakthroughs in hours
  • Full automation of knowledge work
Superintelligence era illustration
Singularity era illustration
2045+

Singularity

Predicted

The point where technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible.

  • Technological singularity?
  • Post-scarcity economy
  • Human-AI convergence
  • Beyond prediction
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