Sep 16(ABC):We’ve been waiting so long for artificial intelligence that it happened almost without us noticing. Stories have primed us for a finite moment, a binary switch after which we become surrounded by intelligent, sentient, humanoid robots. In reality, the emergence and evolution of artificial intelligence have been subtler. Mostly, they exist in our pockets, a complex system residing inside servers, delivered to our phones and other connected devices wirelessly. In some ways, the future is stranger than we ever imagined.
It’s not uncommon for people to interact with multiple digital assistants on any given day. They pull from the collective knowledge of the global internet to answer questions, provide suggestions, and streamline our daily activities. While there are many AI assistants to choose from, Apple customers are most likely to be familiar with Siri.
Apple’s now-famous digital assistant was first introduced on the iPhone in 2011, but its history begins several years earlier. In the years since Siri’s development and debut, it has slowly evolved in our pockets, on our televisions, and on our computers. Each step was incremental, but it resulted in a pretty drastic cumulative shift between where it started, and where it is today. AI, they grow up so fast.
Like any good artificial intelligence story, this one involves some scientists, engineers, and government funding. Certainly, all technologies are the result of collective effort and knowledge stretching back into the past. That makes it difficult to nail down precisely how and when any individual innovation began, but SRI in 2003 is a good place for us to start.