Artificial intelligence (AI, also machine intelligence, MI) is intelligent behaviour by machines, rather than the natural intelligence (NI) of humans and other animals. In computer science AI research is defined as the study of "intelligent agents": any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at some goal.[1] Colloquially, the term "artificial intelligence" is applied when a machine mimics "cognitive" functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as "learning" and "problem solving".[2]
The scope of AI is disputed: as machines become increasingly capable, tasks considered as requiring "intelligence" are often removed from the definition, a phenomenon known as the AI effect, leading to the quip "AI is whatever hasn't been done yet."[3]
This perceives AI as something always in futurity. It is thus a transcendent object. A goal. For instance, optical character recognition is frequently excluded from "artificial intelligence", having become a routine technology.[4] Capabilities generally classified as AI as of 2017 include successfully understanding human speech,[5] competing at a high level in strategic game systems (such as chess and Go[6]), autonomous cars, intelligent routing in content delivery networks, military simulations, and interpreting complex data, including images and videos.
Artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline in 1956, and in the years since has experienced several waves of optimism,[7][8] followed by disappointment and the loss of funding (known as an "AI winter"),[9][10]followed by new approaches, success and renewed funding.[11]
We refer to the Time of Artificial Intelligence as AION.