Generally AI Episode 3: The Founders of CS and AI

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Charles Babbage and Early Computers

Charles Babbage invented mechanical computers called the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine, which were used for various calculations in different professions.

Alan Turing developed the Turing machine in 1936, which is the foundation of modern computers.
Turing machines operate on an infinite tape, reading and writing symbols based on their internal states.
Turing completeness refers to a system's ability to simulate a Turing machine.
Turing equivalence is the concept of having the same computational power as a Turing machine.
The Turing test, proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, aims to determine if machines can think.

Alan Turing worked during World War II at Bletchley Park, cracking German codes encrypted using the Enigma machine.
J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of Lord of the Rings, was one of the linguists working with Turing at Bletchley Park.
The code-breaking machine at Bletchley Park, known as the Bombe, would brute-force all possible combinations to find the correct key for encrypted messages.
During World War II, the US military used Native Americans as "code talkers" to send unbreakable messages in their native language.

Claude Shannon, another famous programmer, has parallels in his career with Alan Turing, including their birthdates, university attendance, and contributions to cryptography and AI.
Shannon's work on information theory in the 1940s laid the foundation for modern communication systems.
Shannon's Master's thesis demonstrated the application of Boolean algebra to electrical circuits, simplifying the design of switching circuits.
Shannon later invented information theory, formalizing the concept of the bit as the unit of information and introducing the idea of entropy as a measure of information content.
Shannon also made contributions to cryptography, proving properties of one-time pads and collaborating with Alan Turing during World War II.
Shannon introduced the concept of cross-entropy, which measures the amount of information in a message based on its probability of occurrence.

The official beginning of AI is often traced back to the 1956 summer workshop at Dartmouth, where Shannon was one of the organizers.
Shannon's other contributions include work in genetics, fire control, signal flow graphs, and the invention of various electromechanical devices.