The author of the term AI is John McCarthy. He is usually called the “father” of artificial intelligence (it would be better to say the father of the definition) and is considered one of the leading scientists in this field. Back in 1956, he and other participants preparing a speech for a conference at Dartmouth defined AI as:
“science and technology aimed at creating intelligent machines”.
After that, many events and breakthroughs occurred, but the definition of the term AI was always explained within the paradigm of McCarthy’s definition or at least somehow taking it into account.
Today, we define AI as follows:
AI is a branch of computer science that deals with the design and construction of computer systems capable of performing tasks that require intelligence usually associated with human intelligence.
At first glance, this definition is pretty decent and easy to understand intuitively. But if you delve deeper into the meaning of the words, it will not immediately be possible to explain what “intelligence usually associated with human intelligence” means. Almost all human behavior is usually perceived through the prism of intelligence, but in reality, not all behavior is. For example, there are many routine actions that define human behavior and should be tasks that are “associated with human intelligence.” But because of routine, they are constantly repeated without change. Therefore, they can be pre-programmed and, therefore, cannot be considered as intelligence. To better understand this, a great example is the digger wasp, which has the scientific name Sphex ichneumoneus.
When she returns with food, the female wasp has to check if there is any danger inside before bringing the food to the hive. She does this in the following way; first she puts the food on the threshold, then she flies in, and if everything is fine, she returns for the food and brings it inside. But if you cheat and move the food while the wasp is in the hive, it will repeat the same procedure from the beginning. And it will do this until the food disappears. This shows that intelligence must solve problems and adapt to new conditions on its own, so as not to turn into a wasp that gets stuck in a repetitive cycle without a result. Thus, AI should have several ordered traits, just like the person who will create this intelligence. It follows that a more appropriate definition of AI can be given.
AI is a scientific field and the technology itself that allows computers to solve human problems, just like humans, who are able to adapt to circumstances, learn new things, process information, draw conclusions, and make decisions on their own.
Reaching this level is not easy, and one solution is to gradually complicate the technology that is already commonly called AI, which is really just narrow artificial intelligence. To better understand this topic, we need to familiarize ourselves with the four types of AI.