MIT

Key findings

1. 1969

   Perceptrons

   Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert

   Proved a single-layer perceptron cannot represent XOR, and questioned whether deeper nets could be trained.

   Why it matters here · Triggered the first AI winter — and the exact limitation that backpropagation later dissolved. The clearest case study in how a proof about one architecture can freeze a field.
2. 1948

   A Mathematical Theory of Communication

   Claude Shannon

   Defined information in bits and the entropy of a source: H = −Σ p log p.

   Why it matters here · Cross-entropy loss — the objective every language model in this catalog is trained against — is a direct application.

   H = −Σ p log p
3. 1966

   ELIZA

   Joseph Weizenbaum

   A pattern-matching script that convincingly imitated a Rogerian therapist in a few hundred lines.

   Why it matters here · Named the ELIZA effect: people attribute understanding to fluent text. Still the single biggest source of overstated AI capability claims.
4. 2020

   Liquid neural networks

   Hasani, Rus et al., CSAIL

   Continuous-time networks whose neuron dynamics adapt after training, robust with very few units.

   Why it matters here · An active alternative line for edge robotics and drones where a transformer will not fit in the power budget.

On the history timeline

Milestones on the 1943 → today timeline credited to this institution.

• 1966ELIZA — the first chatbot, and the first AI illusionJoseph WeizenbaumSymbolic era & the winters
• 1969Perceptrons — the book that triggered the first AI winterMarvin Minsky & Seymour PapertSymbolic era & the winters
• 1981Simulating Physics with ComputersRichard FeynmanSymbolic era & the winters
• 1986Subsumption architecture — intelligence without representationRodney BrooksConnectionist revival

What to follow