The Neural Revolution: McCulloch and Pitts' 1943 Foundation of Modern AI

How a neurophysiologist and a homeless teenager created the mathematical blueprint for artificial intelligence

The 1943 paper "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts established the theoretical foundation for artificial intelligence by showing that finite networks of simple binary threshold neurons can realize any Boolean function, and argued that—with recurrent connections—such networks are, in principle, computationally universal. This groundbreaking work connected neuroscience, mathematics, and logic in ways that would prove prophetic, directly enabling the development of modern neural networks, deep learning, and the AI systems transforming our world today.