Since the public release of ChatGPT, "AI" has taken the world by storm encroaching our daily lives, setting the agenda for government policies, changing how we work, and raising questions about the meaning of human intelligence . But how did it all start? Was it really just Google's Transformers? And are we living through a "once-in-a-humanity" moment?
This course explores how philosophizing, engineering, building, and financing human-made intelligence has evolved over centuries of human history across many continents around the world. While "Artificial Intelligence" as a term has been coined recently the idea of imitating natural intelligence and human behavior has co-existed with the birth of modern science. We will start with the ponderings of natural philosophers of the 16th century Europe, explore the impact of the two industrial revolutions on spread of automation, the world wars, Cold War defense agenda, post-colonial Asia's geopolitical gamble and modern Silicon Valley to tell a full story of how science is born in a complex socio-political context. Students will learn to evaluate and appreciate how modern AI products and systems are the result of human decisions, scientific serendipity, as well as real immediate needs.