Long-form history for curious people
The story of artificial intelligence, properly told.
Deep dives into the history of AI — through narratives, profiles, and pivotal events. No summaries. No hot takes. Just the full story.
The Logic Theorist, 1956: The First AI Program
On a winter night in 1955, a program running on a primitive computer proved a mathematical theorem for the first time in history. Its creators believed they had cracked the secret of human intelligence. They were wrong about that — but right about something more important. The full story of the Logic Theorist: the first AI program ever built.
John von Neumann: The Man Who Designed the Modern Computer
He spoke eight languages, memorized entire books, and solved differential equations in his head for fun. He designed the architecture every computer in the world still uses today, helped build the atomic bomb, and died at fifty-three still dictating equations from his hospital bed. The astonishing, troubling, irreplaceable life of John von Neumann.
The Philosophers Who Asked 'Can Machines Think?'
Before the engineers came the philosophers. Leibniz dreamed of a calculus of thought. Pascal built the first mechanical calculator. Descartes asked whether mechanism had limits. The thinkers who laid the conceptual groundwork for everything that followed — and the questions they left unanswered that we are still wrestling with today.
The Turing Test, 1950: The Question That Still Has No Answer
In October 1950, a mathematician published a thirty-page paper in a philosophy journal that asked a deceptively simple question: can machines think? The paper proposed a test. The test sparked a debate. The debate has never ended. This is the story of the most important thought experiment in the history of AI.
Alan Turing: The Man Who Invented the Future
He broke the Nazi's unbreakable code, designed the architecture of the modern computer, asked whether machines could think, and was then chemically castrated by the government he had saved. The full, extraordinary, heartbreaking life of Alan Turing.
The Ancient Dream of Artificial Life
Before there were computers or circuits, there was the dream that human hands might shape something that thinks. Explore the origins of AI in Greek mythology, Jewish folklore, and the Islamic Golden Age.
“History is not the past. It is the story of how we became who we are — and the only honest guide we have to where we are going.”
Minds & Machines: The Story of AI is published by ishistory. No summaries. No hot takes. Just the full story, told properly.
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