Artificial intelligence · 1985

Bayesian networks

Pearl gives machines a principled way to reason under uncertainty.

Judea Pearl formalised Bayesian networks, graphs of variables with conditional probabilities that support efficient inference. They replaced ad hoc certainty factors and powered spam filters, diagnosis tools and robot localisation. Pearl won the 2011 Turing Award.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

MYCIN 1972
Bayes' theorem 1763

What it led to 2

DARPA Grand Challenge 2005
Variational autoencoder 2013

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Training compute of notable AI models Source: Epoch AI, Notable AI Models (CC BY 4.0)

Computation per constant dollar, 1850-2006 Latest: 7.3B million units of computer power per 2006 $ (2003) Source: Nordhaus 2007, Two Centuries of Productivity Growth in Computing, J. Econ. Hist. 67(1), Table 6