Part 3/10:
The conversation shifts to the history of AI, which Lee notes began with the term being coined in the 1950s at Dartmouth College by John McCarthy. For the next several decades, the field faced skepticism, as early innovations didn't provide practical breakthroughs. Lee reflects on his own work in the late 1990s, notably creating a speech recognition system that propelled the technology into practical use.
Fast forward to recent years, AI has seen a marked transformation driven by deep learning. Lee emphasizes that rather than mimicking human thought processes, AI is fundamentally about understanding and processing vast amounts of data, allowing machines to separate patterns without explicit human programming.