What is A.I?

4 min readMar 6, 2022

I had mentioned the terminology called “A.I” in my my previous two posts —

But, have you wondered what A.I is?

We all know that it stands for Artificial Intelligence and when we hear this terminology many questions pop into our head such as —

What is A.I?
When did A.I come into existence and who invented A.I?
Why is it called Artificial Intelligence and why do we need A.I?
Where do we use A.I?
How much have progressed in the field of A.I?

So, let’s find answers to above questions.

What is A.I?

A.I is the creation of software that imitates human behaviors and capabilities. This is a simple explanation of A.I. But, it’s defined as —

“Artificial Intelligence is a branch of computer science that endeavors to replicate or simulate human intelligence in a machine, so machines can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence.”

It is mainly classified as:-

Artificial Narrow Intelligence:-

Artificial narrow intelligence (ANI), also referred to as weak AI or narrow AI, is the only type of artificial intelligence we have successfully realized to date. Narrow AI is goal-oriented, designed to perform singular tasks — i.e. facial recognition, speech recognition/voice assistants, driving a car, or searching the internet — and is very intelligent at completing the specific task it is programmed to do.

Example:- Self-driving cars.

2. General Artificial Intelligence:-

Artificial general intelligence (AGI), also referred to as strong AI or deep AI, is the concept of a machine with general intelligence that mimics human intelligence and/or behaviors, with the ability to learn and apply its intelligence to solve any problem. AGI can think, understand, and act in a way that is indistinguishable from that of a human in any given situation.

Example:- Smart assistants like Siri, Alexa, etc.

2. When did A.I come into existence and who invented A.I?

For this question, we have to look into history of A.I which is really vast and in short it can be answered as —

In the 1940s and 50s, a handful of scientists from a variety of fields (mathematics, psychology, engineering, economics and political science) began to discuss the possibility of creating an artificial brain. The field of artificial intelligence research was founded as an academic discipline in 1956.

The earliest substantial work in the field of artificial intelligence was done in the mid-20th century by the British logician and computer pioneer, Alan Mathison Turing. In 1935 Turing described an abstract computing machine consisting of a limitless memory and a scanner that moves back and forth through the memory, symbol by symbol, reading what it finds and writing further symbols. The actions of the scanner are dictated by a program of instructions that also is stored in the memory in the form of symbols. This is Turing’s stored-program concept, and implicit in it is the possibility of the machine operating on, and so modifying or improving, its own program. Turing’s conception is now known simply as the universal Turing machine. All modern computers are in essence universal Turing machines.

The “founding fathers” of artificial intelligence are with Alan Turing, Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon, John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky.

3. Why is it called Artificial Intelligence and why do we need A.I?

A.I wasn’t formally founded until 1956, at a conference at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire where the term “Artificial Intelligence” was coined.

We need A.I as it provides so many benefits.