Azure OpenAI Service for Cloud Native Applications

Chapter 1. Introduction to Generative AI and Azure OpenAI Service

This first chapter covers the fundamentals of artificial intelligence (AI) as a way to contextualize the new developments with generative AI. It includes some technology-agnostic topics that will be useful for any kind of implementation, but it focuses on Azure OpenAI Service as the key building block to enable cloud-native application development with generative AI.

What Is Artificial Intelligence?

This section focuses on the historical evolution of AI technologies and related use cases as a way to demystify what AI actually looks like, and to connect traditional approaches with new generative AI techniques and capabilities.

Let’s start with its origins. The term “AI” was coined during the 1950s. Concretely, Professor John McCarthy defined artificial intelligence in 1955 as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines”. It is also fair to say that Professor Alan Turing previously introduced the notion of thinking machines. In 1956, Dartmouth College hosted the Summer Research Project on AI conference, with a group of participants from the most relevant universities and companies. That conference was led by Prof. McCarthy and other renowned researchers, and it was the beginning of the AI area of research. In the time since, there have been multiple cycles of hype, disappointments due to unrealistic expectations (periods often referred as AI winters due to reduced funding and general interest for ...