1.2 — 1956: the birth of AI & the 3 seasons

Artificial Intelligence was not born with ChatGPT. The term “artificial intelligence” was coined by researcher John McCarthy at a founding conference at Dartmouth College in 1956. Since then, AI has gone through three great eras — punctuated by two “winters” when almost no one believed in it anymore.

These three “seasons”: expert systems (we write the rules by hand), Deep Learning (we show it examples; detailed in 1.5), then the generative era (the machine creates). We walk through them in the following lessons.

🟢 In plain words — AI is almost 70 years old. It has simply switched methods three times: first we dictated the rules, then we showed it examples, and today it produces content.

✅ In short

• The term “artificial intelligence” dates from 1956 (Dartmouth, John McCarthy).
• AI has gone through three great eras, punctuated by two “winters.”
• Those eras: expert systems → Deep Learning → generative era.