Introduction
The field of artificial intelligence has recently experienced explosive growth led by generative AI large models. On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released an AI chatbot named ChatGPT, whose outstanding natural language generation capabilities garnered widespread attention worldwide. Within two months, it surpassed 100 million users, triggering a wave of large models both domestically and internationally, such as Gemini, Wenxin Yiyan, Copilot, LLaMA, SAM, and SORA, among others. The year 2022 was hailed as the inaugural year of large models. The current information age is rapidly entering the development stage of intelligent computing, with continuous breakthroughs in AI technology gradually empowering various industries, making artificial intelligence and data elements typical representatives of new productive forces. General Secretary Xi Jinping noted that the new generation of artificial intelligence should be used as a driving force to promote technological leapfrogging, industrial optimization, and overall productivity improvement, striving for high-quality development. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party, the central leadership with Xi Jinping at its core has attached great importance to the development of the intelligent economy, promoting the deep integration of artificial intelligence with the real economy, injecting strong momentum into high-quality development.
Today, I am sharing an article by Sun Ninghui, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of the Academic Committee at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, titled “The Development of Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Computing.” Due to the length of the article, it will be published in two parts.
1. Overview of Computing Technology Development
The history of computing technology can be roughly divided into four stages. The emergence of the abacus marked the first generation—mechanical computing era. The second generation—electronic computing was marked by the advent of electronic devices and electronic computers. The emergence of the internet ushered us into the third generation—network computing, and currently, human society is entering the fourth stage—intelligent computing. Early computing devices were manual and semi-automatic computing devices. The history of human computing tools began with the Chinese abacus in 1200 AD, followed by the invention of Napier’s bones (1612) and the wheel-based adder (1642), leading to the birth of the first automatic calculator—the step-by-step calculator—in 1672. Basic concepts of modern computers had already emerged during the mechanical computing era. Charles Babbage proposed the designs for the Difference Engine (1822) and the Analytical Engine (1834), supporting automatic mechanical computation.
During this period, the concepts of programming and programs were fundamentally established. The concept of programming originated from the Jacquard loom, which controlled printed patterns through punched cards, eventually evolving into the storage of all mathematical calculation steps in the form of computational instructions. The first programmer in human history was Ada, the daughter of the poet Lord Byron, who wrote a set of instructions for calculating Bernoulli numbers for Babbage’s Difference Engine. This set of instructions is also recognized as the first computer algorithm in history, separating hardware from software and introducing the concept of a program for the first time.
Until the first half of the twentieth century, four scientific foundations of modern computing technology emerged: Boolean algebra (mathematics), Turing machines (computational models), Von Neumann architecture (architecture), and transistors (devices). Among them, Boolean algebra is used to describe the underlying logic of programs and hardware such as CPUs; Turing machines are a general computational model that transforms complex tasks into automated processes that require no human intervention; the Von Neumann architecture proposed three fundamental principles for constructing computers: using binary logic, storing and executing programs, and consisting of five basic units: arithmetic logic unit, control unit, memory, input devices, and output devices; transistors are semiconductor devices that form the basic logical circuits and storage circuits, serving as the