ABSTRACT
Big data was the hot topic in business circles in the early 2010s. Turning big data into information and thence into understanding and insight is the job of algorithms – in other words, of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Big data was an important phenomenon in its own right, but it achieved particular significance because it helped to make AI an overnight success, after 60 years of trying. One of the algorithms which inspired the highest hopes was a simplified model of the neurons in the human brain, invented in 1957 by Frank Rosenblatt. Machine learning researchers work with a wide range of algorithms. Intelligence, the ability to process information and solve problems, is very different to consciousness, the possession of subjective experience. The brilliant British mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing is often described as the father of both computer science and AI.
