The rise of AI is a topic that has been on everyone’s minds lately. AI both benefits and harms society in numerous different ways. It has beneficial impacts such as helping progress with technology. However it is also harmful in many different ways to many different careers.
The Beginning of AI
The idea of artificial intelligence goes back hundreds of years. Ancient inventors created “automatons” which were mechanical and moved independently of human intervention. The earliest of automatons goes back to 400 BCE, however one of the more famous automatons was created by Leonardo da Vinci in about 1495.
Although that does show proof of early AI, scientists really started making strides towards modern-day AI in the 1900s. In the early 1900s, there was the idea floating around the idea of artificial humans. One of the big questions that arose was is it possible to create an artificial brain? In 1921 Czech playwright Karel Čapek released a science fiction play which introduced the idea of “artificial people” which he named robots. In 1929, a Japanese professor by the name of Makoto Nishimura created the first Japanese robot and named it Gakutensoku. In 1949 a computer scientist named Edmund Callis Berkley published a book which compared the newer models of computers to human brains. The first time the idea of AI really came to head was in the 1950s. In 1950 Alan Turing proposed a test of machine intelligence called The Imitation Game. In 1952 a computer scientist named Arthur Samuel developed a program to play checkers, which is the first to ever learn the game independently. John McCarthy held a workshop at Dartmouth on “artificial intelligence” which was where the phrase of artificial intelligence came to mind.
The time between the creation of the phrase “artificial intelligence” and the 1970s was a time of growth and struggle for AI research. In the later 1950s and through the 1960s was a time where programming languages that are still in use to this day were created. In this time, AI slowly became a mainstream idea. The 1970s showed similar improvements, such as the first anthropomorphic robot being built. However, at this time, the US government showed very little interest in funding AI research. The end of the 1970s also brought the end of the pre-AI world. In the 1980s we saw AI start to become a topic of interest in many sciences.
AI Boom and AI Winter
Most of the 1980s showed a sharp incline in the growth and interest of AI, and now known as the AI boom. In 1980 the first conference of the AAAI was held at Stanford. In 1984 the AAAI warned of an “AI Winter” in which funding for AI would decrease. In 1986 Ernst Dickmann and his team at Bundeswehr University of Munich created and demonstrated the first driverless car (or robot car). It could drive up to 55 mph on roads that didn’t have other obstacles or human drivers. In 1987 was the start of the AI Winter, which lacked funding and many massive breakthroughs. The only major thing that happened was when computer programmer Rollo Carpenter invented the chatbot Jabberwacky.
After the AI winter was a period when AI agents rose.
The Rise of AI
The rise of AI as we know it today started in about 1997. AI was finally coming out of their “winter” where AI funding was very low. In 1997 was the first major breakthrough of this era when Windows released a speech recognition software. In 2000, Professor Cynthia Breazeal developed the first robot that could simulate human emotions with its face. In 2006 however, we started to see companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Netflix using AI as a part of their user experience algorithms. In 2011 Apple released Siri, the first popular virtual assistant. In 2014, the beloved Alexa was created. In 2015 we saw Google release the first driverless car for the public. In 2018, the development of AI started to spread in the arts when a set of original paintings created by machines using Generative Adversarial Network technology sold for more than $400,000 at a Christie’s auction. In 2020, AI helped scientists with the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, Chat-GPT was officially released to the public, which is still currently being developed. In 2023, conversations about AI shifted from “if” to “when”. In 2024, over 75% of businesses were using AI in any way. In 2025, companies unveiled significant updates to humanoid robots, signaling the emergence of physical intelligence. That wraps up the rise of AI, however AI is moving so quickly at this rate who knows where it will be in 6 months.
AI’s Impact on Future Societies
In the next few years, AI will become a fixture in many aspects of our personal and business lives. AI regulations and ethical standards will have to advance significantly for AI ubiquity to become a reality. According to Elon Musk, by 2030, AI will surpass “the intelligence of all humans combined.” Musk also says robots will become surgeons within the next three years. AI may also replace many jobs, which is my next talking point.
AI’s Impact on Potential Careers
Despite concerns from most people, AI won’t have as big of an impact as we think. Goldman Sachs Research estimates that unemployment will increase by half a percentage point. However, if widely adopted it could displace 6-7% of the US workforce if AI is widely adopted. Our economists estimate that generative AI will raise the level of labor productivity in the US and other developed markets by around 15%. Careers such as plumbers may have an easier time succeeding.