Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence?(AI) is?intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by?machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by?non-human animals?and?humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech recognition, computer vision, translation between (natural) languages, as well as other mappings of inputs.
AI applications?include advanced?web search?engines (e.g.,?Google Search),?recommendation systems?(used by?YouTube,?Amazon, and?Netflix),?understanding human speech?(such as?Siri?and?Alexa),?self-driving cars?(e.g.,?Waymo), generative or creative tools (ChatGPT?and?AI art),?automated decision-making, and competing at the highest level in?strategic game?systems (such as?chess?and?Go).
As machines become increasingly capable, tasks considered to require "intelligence" are often removed from the definition of AI, a phenomenon known as the?AI effect.?For instance,?optical character recognition?is frequently excluded from things considered to be AI,?having become a routine technology.[
Artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline in 1956, and in the years since it has experienced several waves of optimism,followed by disappointment and the loss of funding (known as an "AI winter"),?followed by new approaches, success, and renewed funding.?AI research has tried and discarded many different approaches, including simulating the brain,?modeling human problem solving,?formal logic,?large databases of knowledge, and imitating animal behavior. In the first decades of the 21st century, highly mathematical and statistical?machine learning?has dominated the field, and this technique has proved highly successful, helping to solve many challenging problems throughout industry and academia.
The various sub-fields of AI research are centered around particular goals and the use of particular tools. The traditional goals of AI research include?reasoning,?knowledge representation,?planning,?learning,?natural language processing,?perception, and the ability to move and manipulate objects.[a]?General intelligence?(the ability to solve an arbitrary problem) is among the field's long-term goals.To solve these problems, AI researchers have adapted and integrated a wide range of problem-solving techniques, including search and mathematical optimization, formal logic,?artificial neural networks, and methods based on?statistics,?probability, and?economics. AI also draws upon?computer science,?psychology,?linguistics,?philosophy, and many other fields.
The field was founded on the assumption that human intelligence "can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it".[b]?This raised philosophical arguments about the mind and the ethical consequences of creating artificial beings endowed with human-like intelligence; these issues have previously been explored by?myth,?fiction, and?philosophy?since antiquity.Computer scientists?and?philosophers?have since suggested that AI may become an?existential risk?to humanity if its rational capacities are not steered towards beneficial goals.
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History
Silver?didrachma?from?Crete?depicting?Talos, an ancient mythical?automaton?with artificial intelligence
Artificial beings?with intelligence appeared as?storytelling devices?in antiquity,and have been common in fiction, as in?Mary Shelley's?Frankenstein?or?Karel ?apek's?R.U.R.?These characters and their fates raised many of the same issues now discussed in the?ethics of artificial intelligence.
The study of mechanical or?"formal" reasoning?began with?philosophers?and mathematicians in antiquity. The study of mathematical logic led directly to?Alan Turing's?theory of computation, which suggested that a machine, by shuffling symbols as simple as "0" and "1", could simulate any conceivable act of mathematical deduction. This insight that digital computers can simulate any process of formal reasoning is known as the?Church–Turing thesis.This, along with concurrent discoveries in?neurobiology,?information theory?and?cybernetics, led researchers to consider the possibility of building an electronic brain.The first work that is now generally recognized as AI was?McCullouch?and?Pitts' 1943 formal design for?Turing-complete?"artificial neurons".
By the 1950s, two visions for how to achieve machine intelligence emerged. One vision, known as?Symbolic AI?or?GOFAI, was to use computers to create a symbolic representation of the world and systems that could reason about the world. Proponents included?Allen Newell,?Herbert A. Simon, and?Marvin Minsky. Closely associated with this approach was the?"heuristic search"?approach.