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Milestones In Artificial Intelligence

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Twenty years ago today, computer Deep Blue made history by beating world champion Garry Kasparov in a game of chess. The Onion looks back at some of the most important moments in the development of AI technology:

600 B.C.

Persian scholars begin to worry their abacuses are getting too powerful

1943

Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener, and Julian Bigelow define the field of cybernetics, still in use today to help people make purchases without getting up

1950

Alan Turing invents the Turing test, a method of determining when it is already too late

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1961

The world’s first industrial robot, Unimate, begins suggesting to workers at a General Motors plant that maybe this whole union thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

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1979

After decades of attempts, MIT researchers successfully design a robot capable of beating a human at Twister

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1998

Furby domesticated

2002

iRobot releases the Roomba, a machine that autonomously bumps into things around the house

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2009

Google’s first self-driving car successfully plows over a San Francisco homeless man

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2011

In the show’s most highly anticipated episode ever, the computer known as Watson hosts Jeopardy!

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2013

Apple’s Siri recommends a restaurant that’s not even fucking close to this neighborhood

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2021

Disney World’s Country Bears rise up against their oppressors

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