Surfing the AI Waves

Matteo Cristofaro and Pier Luigi Giardino organize AI history around five overlapping phases, from symbolic systems to proposed human–AI collaboration. The article first appeared online on March 19, 2025; its journal issue is dated 2026.^[1]

Contribution and relevance

Their historical literature synthesis connects technical developments, management theory, and organizational practice. It offers a lens for Social Alignment: technical capabilities and institutional readiness can develop at different speeds. This organizational mismatch is distinct from Inner Alignment.

Limits

The authors acknowledge oversimplification, neglected incremental changes, geographical and sector differences, and selection favoring high-ranking journals. The framework is an interpretation, not a tested forecast. Its statement that the term artificial intelligence was coined at the 1956 workshop conflicts with its appearance in the 1955 proposal; see the dated original proposal for that chronology. Do not import the article’s compressed historical dates or broad causal generalizations without original evidence.^[1]