By Javier Surasky
There was a
time when artificial intelligence was merely a curiosity in laboratories and
the domain of visionary scientists. Yet within a few decades, it evolved from
an academic experiment into something akin to a mirror of humanity — capable of
defeating world champions, creating art, or even being granted citizenship.
Each of these moments sparked a mix of wonder and collective unease: the sense
that we were witnessing something beyond technology itself.
This post
revisits ten key moments, following a chronological order, when AI stepped
out of the lab and entered public conversation, forever changing our
relationship with machines that learn, think, create, and sometimes even seem
to dream.
1.
Bertie the Brain Challenges the Public in Toronto (1950)
Created by
Austrian-Canadian engineer Josef Kates, Bertie
the Brain was an enormous computer — over four meters tall — capable of
playing tic-tac-toe with visitors at the Canadian National Exhibition. It was
the first interactive video game ever shown to the public and the first
large-scale encounter between people and a machine making decisions. Its
success revealed the deep human fascination with “intelligent” machines.
2. ELIZA
and the Illusion of Being Understood (1966)
At MIT, Joseph
Weizenbaum created ELIZA,
a program that simulated a conversation with a psychotherapist. Many users
believed the machine actually understood them, prompting Weizenbaum to warn
about the dangers of projecting human emotions onto algorithms. Thus was born
the ELIZA effect, which still shapes our emotional relationship with
chatbots today.
3. Deep
Blue Defeats Garry Kasparov (1997)
When IBM’s
supercomputer beat the
world chess champion, millions watched the news with astonishment. It
wasn’t just a game — it symbolized the moment when human intellect could be
surpassed in its own domain of logic and strategy. That victory marked the
beginning of both respect — and fear — for AI as an intellectual rival.
4.
Roomba Brings Robotics Home (2002)
With its
round shape and autonomous movements, the little robotic vacuum became a
commercial sensation. Roomba marked the first time AI truly entered
households, becoming part of everyday life. (The internet quickly filled with
videos of cats “riding” their Roombas.)
5. DARPA
Grand Challenge: The Cars That Learned to Drive Themselves (2004 – 2007)
The US
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) challenged
universities and companies to build autonomous vehicles capable of crossing
deserts and navigating cities without drivers. What began as a military
experiment inspired the self-driving-car industry and redefined what machines
could do in the physical world. From then on, driverless travel left the realm
of science fiction.
6. IBM
Watson Conquers Jeopardy! (2011)
IBM’s Watson not only
won the iconic TV quiz show against top human champions — it also understood
jokes, puns, and ambiguous clues. Watson demonstrated that AI could process
natural language at a human level, opening a new era of expectations about its
applications. Viewers witnessed, live on television, a machine that seemed to
“think out loud.”
7.
Victories Over the Masters of Go (2016 – 2017)
In 2016, Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo
defeated world champion Lee Sedol in the complex game of Go, astonishing
audiences worldwide with its creative play. AlphaGo didn’t just win — it
invented never-before-seen strategies (Move 37 in Game 2) and inspired human
responses of equal brilliance (Move 78 in Game 4).
AlphaGo’s
innovation in a millennia-old game generated both admiration and cultural
vertigo. Newspapers compared the moment to humankind’s first steps on the Moon.
In 2017, an
upgraded version called AlphaGo
Master played against Ke Jie, China’s world number one, and won three
straight games. The shock was such that, only weeks later, the Chinese
government announced its National AI Development Plan (July 2017), declaring AI
a strategic priority to achieve global leadership by 2030 — a decision
that reshaped geopolitics.
8. Saudi
Arabia Grants “Citizenship” to Robot Sophia (2017)
In a gesture
as symbolic as it was controversial, Saudi
Arabia granted “citizenship” to the humanoid robot Sophia. The news went
viral, igniting debates about rights, identity, and humanity in the digital
age. Sophia became a media icon and a metaphor for our desire to create
artificial life with a human face.
For the
first time, a machine was treated — albeit symbolically — as a citizen. The
scene felt like science fiction made flesh: a humanoid figure “with a face”
claiming symbolic status.
9.
ChatGPT and the Global Conversation (2022)
The public release of ChatGPT marked a
turning point. For the first time, millions could talk with a system that
understood questions, wrote essays, told jokes, and composed songs. Within
weeks it reached 100 million users, transforming AI into a dinner-table topic.
Conversing with AI stopped being a curiosity and became part of daily life.
10. Sora
and the Frontier of AI-Generated Video (2024)
The debut of Sora, OpenAI’s model
capable of generating realistic videos from text prompts, once again stunned
the world. The images were indistinguishable from reality, opening a new
chapter in the relationship between creativity, truth, and technology.
With Sora,
AI no longer merely writes or converses — it imagines. This visual leap closed
one era and opened another, questioning how far simulation can go. It arrived
only months after the Hollywood actors’ strike (July – November 2023), which
demanded better conditions under streaming platforms and clear limits on AI’s
use to replicate performers’ voices and likenesses.
From
fairground machines to creative partners and workplace collaborators, AI’s
journey reveals fragments of our own reflection in technology. Artificial
intelligence has not only advanced in capability but has become a part of our
collective consciousness, challenging what we mean by intelligence, creativity,
and even humanity itself.
Paradoxically,
its presence has plunged us into the solitude of a fractured self-image: humans
are no longer the only “intelligent beings,” and we’ve lost our exclusive place
in the world.
Where will
the next defining moments in our relationship with AI come from — and what will
they bring? No one can say. But one thing grows increasingly clear: this
issue is far too important to be left solely to scientists and programmers. AI
has become both a common good and a shared responsibility — and to act
responsibly, we must first strive to understand it, however difficult that may
be.