Artificial neurons – a brief glimpse into the early history of machine learning

Before we discuss the perceptron and related algorithms in more detail, let’s take a brief tour of the beginnings of machine learning. Trying to understand how the biological brain works in order to design an artificial intelligence (AI), Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts published the first concept of a simplified brain cell, the so-called McCulloch-Pitts (MCP) neuron, in 1943 (A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity by W. S. McCulloch and W. Pitts, Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, 5(4): 115-133, 1943).

Biological neurons are interconnected nerve cells in the brain that are involved in the processing and transmitting of chemical and electrical signals, which is illustrated in Figure 2.1:

Figure 2.1: A neuron processing chemical and electrical signals

McCulloch and Pitts described such a nerve cell as a simple logic gate with binary outputs; multiple...