#BigIdeas - Getting Smarter – How Artificial Intelligence Has Evolved to Help Businesses

In 1986, while pursuing my Master's Degree in Computer Science, I selected Artificial Intelligence (AI) as my area of emphasis and my thesis topic. During that time, I learned to program systems using Boolean logic, syntax trees and relational databases to model "intelligent" decision making, like solving a problem for a monkey to use a chair and a stick to reach bananas hanging from the ceiling. This enabled the machine to foresee the best path to achieve a desired outcome. While not exactly "intelligence," this fast comparison of alternative options was unprecedented. Many others shared this view that in the future, science and technology would create systems that would drive massive impacts and societal change, but timelines were foggy.