According to [1] there was a system in 1968 that “consistently outperformed humans when presented with the same recognition tasks”.

As someone who was into programming and electronics in the eighties, I also feel a need to object whenever people say things like “we thought it was AI until we could make a computer do it, and now it’s just math” (paraphrasing).

We (those of us interested in the subject back then) had a pretty good idea about what would be possible in the future (because of faster machines and more storage) and what would not be possible in the future (unless a breakthrough was made in understanding intelligence).

Now, I do think we underestimated how fast things have developed, and especially the resources people have access today via the internet, but none of what I have seen today would have been classified as AI by myself back in the eighties.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_recognition_system#Hist...