In 2021, BNVKI celebrates its 40th birthday. The organisation — or rather, its Dutch forerunner, the NVKI — was founded in 1981. Since then, the domain of Artificial Intelligence has come a very long way!

To remind us of what the world was like 40 years ago, the following video clip from Dutch television shows the state-of-the-art in Computer Science as it was 1979, a mere two years before (B)NVKI was founded. It covers the “Human and Computer” exhibition that was held in The Hague that year and was kindly provided to us by Beeld en Geluid.

As you can see, Computer Science has changed quite a bit in the past 40 years! It has been an honour for (B)NVKI to be able to encourage the growth and development of AI in the Benelux throughout these four decades of rapid change.