History of AI / 1956 to today
Decades in the making.
Now in your hands.
Six turning points, from a research idea to technology reshaping everyday work.
1956
A field gets a name.
The Dartmouth Summer Research Project brings researchers together around artificial intelligence, helping establish the field.
Dartmouth, The dawn of AI ↗ (opens in a new tab)1997
Machines master the board.
IBM’s Deep Blue defeats world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match. A landmark for specialized computing—not general intelligence.
IBM, Deep Blue ↗ (opens in a new tab)2016
Learning changes the game.
AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol 4–1. Deep neural networks, search, and reinforcement learning tackle the complexity of Go.
Google DeepMind, AlphaGo ↗ (opens in a new tab)2017
A new architecture arrives.
The Transformer paper introduces an attention-based architecture that becomes foundational to many language models.
Google Research, Attention Is All You Need ↗ (opens in a new tab)2022
AI becomes a conversation.
ChatGPT launches as a public research preview on November 30, putting conversational generative AI within reach of a broad audience.
OpenAI, Introducing ChatGPT ↗ (opens in a new tab)2026
The next chapter is the work.
McKinsey’s survey finds 44% of respondents report AI scaling across their organizations. The business challenge shifts toward useful workflows, adoption, and measurable results.
McKinsey, The state of AI 2026 ↗ (opens in a new tab)
Start with one conversation.
Ninety minutes with an advisor shows you the three places AI pays back first in your business. If the honest answer is “not yet”, we say so, and you keep the summary.