1945: Alan Turing

As early as 1945, Alan Turing had already been contemplating how to use computers to simulate the human brain. He designed the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) to mimic brain function. In a letter to a colleague, he wrote: "Compared to the practical applications of computing, I might be more interested in creating models of brain function... Although the mechanism of brain function calculates through the complex neuron circuitry of axonal and dendritic growth, we can still create a model in ACE that allows for this possibility. The actual construction of ACE has not changed, it simply remembers the data..." This is the origin of machine intelligence, at least as it was defined in the UK at that time.