Enterprise AI For Dummies

Chapter 1

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence

IN THIS CHAPTER

Discovering how you can use AI

Recognizing the key technologies that make AI possible

Looking under the hood to see how it works

While some have traced the history of artificial intelligence back to Greek mythology and philosophers, fast-forward with me to the twentieth century when serious work on AI was directed to practical applications.

The term artificial intelligence was first used in a 1955 proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, in which American computer scientist John McCarthy and others wrote:

“We propose that a 2-month, 10-man study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.”

Over the following decades, AI progress waxed and waned as development overcame one obstacle only to encounter another.

In this chapter, you get an idea of what, why, and how:

• What the fuss is all about, what AI can ...