Artificial intelligence · 1948

Cybernetics

Wiener names the science of feedback and control in animals and machines.

Norbert Wiener's 1948 book Cybernetics unified feedback control, communication and neuroscience into one field. The Macy conferences it grew from brought together the people who would later found AI, and its ideas shaped robotics, control theory and early neural models.

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

Information theory 1948
McCulloch-Pitts neuron 1943

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