Artificial intelligence · 1965
Dendral
The first expert system infers molecular structures from mass spectra.
Edward Feigenbaum, Joshua Lederberg and Bruce Buchanan built Dendral at Stanford to identify organic molecules. Its success showed that encoded expert knowledge, not general reasoning, was the key to useful performance, founding the expert systems approach.
What it built on 3
What it led to 1
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