What is AI or Artificial Intelligence? - E-book - ePub

Artificial intelligence (AI), in the context of computer science, is the set of systems or combination of algorithms, whose purpose is to create machines that imitate human intelligence to perform tasks and can improve based on the information they collect. Artificial intelligence is not intended to replace humans, but rather to significantly enhance human capabilities and contributions. It became present shortly after World War II, and the name was coined in 1956 by computer scientist John McCarthy, at the Dartmouth Conference.
Today, artificial intelligence encompasses a wide variety of subfields. These range from general purpose areas, learning and perception, to more specific ones such as playing chess, proving mathematical theorems, writing poetry and diagnosing diseases. Artificial Intelligence synthesizes and automates tasks that are in principle intellectual and, therefore, is potentially relevant to any field of various human intellectual activities.
In this sense, it is a genuinely universal field.