Exhibition explores World War Two origins of AI

A new exhibition explores the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in modern society and how its origins were connected to World War Two.

During that conflict, Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes, in Buckinghamshire, was where top-secret work took place to crack coded messages used by the Nazis and German high command.

In November 2023, it was the venue of the first global AI Safety Summit, attended by then prime minister Rishi Sunak and tech billionaire Elon Musk.

To coincide with the third summit, hosted in France in February, Bletchley Park will hold a new exhibition called The Age of AI which it said will explore the past, present, and future of the technology.

Dr David Kenyon, research historian at Bletchley Park, pointed out the origins of AI were linked to the history of the code-breaking site.

He explained: "Key figures in the early development of AI: Jack Good, Donald Mickey, Alan Turing, were all here. So Bletchley Park feels like a natural place to talk about AI.

"There's no doubt their thinking about computing was heavily influenced by the work they done here."

He pointed out that mathematician Irving 'Jack' Good once described a future with AI as a utopia, he later changed his mind and was a consultant for the sinister computer character HAL 9000 in the film '2001: A Space Odyssey'.

Dr Kenyon said: "Even the characters involved, Jack Good for example, changed his mind himself. So we have perhaps gone from 'the future is bright' to 'the future is uncertain'."

Tilly Davies, exhibition and interpretations manager at Bletchley Park, explained the event explores how artificial intelligence was developing and becoming a part of our everyday life.

"We've really tried to present a balanced view of both the opportunities and the risks of AI," she said.

"We've talked to experts across the field, who all have slightly different opinions on the future of AI as well."

The exhibition considers how AI was being used to tackle climate change but balanced that with an examination of the energy costs from data centres used to program the technology.

Erica Munro, head of content at Bletchley Park, admitted AI is a "complicated and enormous topic".

She added: "Bletchley Park was a place during World War Two where technology was used to help solve really thorny, difficult, complicated problems - what is AI if not a tool to help us do that nowadays?"

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