You've seen ChatGPT revolutionize how project managers plan initiatives, track progress, and communicate with stakeholders. But this "overnight success" actually took 70 years to build!
Understanding AI's journey helps you select better project tools, optimize team workflows, and anticipate how GenAI will reshape project management.
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What's the oldest AI technology you've encountered in your project management work?
It all started in 1950 when Alan Turing asked: "Can machines think?" His famous Turing Test challenged whether a computer could fool humans in conversation.
This wasn't just philosophy - it set the foundation for every chatbot interface and stakeholder communication tool we use in project management today.
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Do you think modern AI assistants for project planning pass the Turing Test when generating status reports?
Early chatbots were surprisingly simple. ELIZA (1966) pretended to be a therapist using basic pattern matching - no real intelligence!
Yet users formed connections with it, teaching us crucial lessons about user experience and interface design that still guide how we build stakeholder communication and project reporting tools.
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Have you ever found yourself clarifying project requirements by explaining them to an AI assistant or virtual team member?
The real breakthrough came in the 1980s with "neural networks" - systems that learn like brains do.
But here's the catch: they needed massive computing power that didn't exist yet. AI entered its first "winter" - sound familiar to any project initiatives that failed due to resource constraints?
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What breakthrough do you think finally gave AI the computational power it needed?
The game-changer? Graphics cards from gaming! Starting in 1999, GPUs gave AI the parallel processing muscle it needed.
