AI Origins

The terms “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning” are in common use.

Whether it’s already an integral part of your sales pitch, or you’re thinking of ways it can add value, AI is here to stay and continues to embed itself in all aspects of business and society.

With such rapid adoption and future gazing, I’m curious to delve into the past and understand: where did it all start?

Some say AI was first conceived almost two centuries ago.

Let’s take a trip back through time to Victorian England and give a nod to those individuals who designed and built intelligent machines along the way.

Charles Babbage (bottom-right) is credited as “the father of computing”.

However, the magic of AI lies in programming the computer to reason and solve problems with human-like intelligence.

For that, credit goes to the world’s first computer programmer:

Lady Ada King, Countess of Lovelace.

Early life

Born Ada Gordon in 1815, she was the daughter of the English poet George Gordon aka Lord Byron. He was renowned for his impulsive behaviour and manic episodes and didn’t stick around, leaving England soon after her birth.

Ada’s mother, Anne Milbanke, had a keen interest in mathematics and actively discouraged her daughter from pursuing literature, worried she might end up like her father.

Ada turned out to be a gifted mathematician, musician and linguist.

The Difference Engine

In 1833, 17-year-old Ada met mathematician and engineer Charles Babbage at a party. She was intrigued to see him demo a small prototype of his “Difference Engine”.

He was pitching the concept of a mechanical calculator that could accurately output nautical charts. Geolocation back then relied on correctly calculating distances between stars and landmarks. Human error in calculating coordinates could mean life or death for sailors out on the tempestuous seas.

Ada and Charles hit it off as friends and intellectual cohorts and kept in touch over the decade that followed, during which time Ada married the Earl of Lovelace and raised kids.

The Analytical Engine

Charles sketched designs for the more advanced “Analytical Engine”. The theoretical steam-powered programmable computer would have two main units:

1. The Store: a type of memory unit that could store numbers as well as the instructions required to process those numbers
2. The Mill: the calculating unit which would perform addition, subtraction, multiplication and division

Instructions on punched cards would be fed into the machine, and results from the Mill could be looped back into the Store.

The first computer programme

Ada realised that the Analytical Engine could be programmed with its own instructions.

In 1842, she wrote an algorithm using conditional statements (e.g. and, if, else, repeat) that would instruct the Engine to either output a result or feed a new value into the next operation cycle. And with this, computer programming was born.

Kudos to Charles who envisioned mechanical versions of modern-day computer hardware, e.g. data storage and computer processing unit (CPU).

However, it was Ada who recognised that the Analytical Engine could be more than a mere calculator.

She philosophised, for example, that computers might one day compose music.

"Again, it might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine. Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."

— Ada Lovelace, Note A, "Sketch of The Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage"

Copyright © Mark Omfalos 2024