artificial intelligence

Branch of science concerned with creating computer programs that can perform actions comparable with those of an intelligent human, including learning and adaptation. AI research covers such areas as planning (for robot behaviour), language understanding, pattern recognition, and knowledge representation.

The possibility of artificial intelligence was first proposed by the English mathematician Alan Turing in 1950. Early AI programs, developed in the 1960s, attempted simulations of human intelligence or were aimed at general problem-solving techniques. By the mid-1990s, scientists were concluding that AI was more difficult to create than they had imagined. It is now thought that intelligent behaviour depends as much on the knowledge a system possesses as on its reasoning power. Present emphasis is on knowledge-based systems, such as expert systems, while research projects focus on neural networks, which attempt to mimic the structure of the human brain.

On the Internet, small bits of software that automate common routines or attempt to predict human likes or behaviour based on past experience are called intelligent agents or bots.