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A field guide
Seventy-five years of AI, from Turing's thought experiment to agents that use your computer. Built for developers who want the shape of the field, not just the latest headline.
ERA ONE
1950–1979
Where the idea begins. Turing asks whether machines can think; Dartmouth gives the field its name.
ERA TWO
1980–1985
Symbolic AI finds its first commercial footing. Hand-crafted rules do narrow, useful work.
ERA THREE
1986–2011
Backpropagation quietly matures. Big-company attention drifts; the groundwork gets laid.
ERA FOUR
2012–2016
AlexNet wins ImageNet. Scale, GPUs, and data turn neural nets into a practical tool.
ERA FIVE
2017–2021
Attention is all you need. The Transformer unlocks foundation models; GPT and BERT arrive.
ERA SIX
2022–2023
ChatGPT hits a million users in five days. Claude and GPT-4 follow. AI becomes public infrastructure.
ERA SEVEN
2024–2026
Models stop answering questions and start taking actions. MCP, tool use, and autonomous workflows.
A field guide
Six quick questions. No email, no sign-up. We'll suggest what to read next.
Question 1 of 6
Have you used an AI model in the last week?
ERA EIGHT
ongoing
Unwritten.