Fields

Artificial Intelligence

Also Known As AI

Citation Formats

General Reference

Computing Atlas. "Artificial Intelligence." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-computing.interactiveatlas.org/fields/artificial-intelligence.

APA Style

Computing Atlas. (n.d.). Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-computing.interactiveatlas.org/fields/artificial-intelligence

BibTeX

@misc{computingatlas-artificial-intelligence,
  author = {Computing Atlas},
  title = {Artificial Intelligence},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-computing.interactiveatlas.org/fields/artificial-intelligence},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Artificial Intelligence studies how to build systems that perform tasks which, when done by people, are said to require intelligence: reasoning, learning, perception and language understanding among them. The field takes its name from a 1956 summer workshop at Dartmouth College, organized by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester and Claude Shannon, where McCarthy proposed the term. Its history has moved through repeated cycles of rapid progress and disillusionment, commonly called AI winters, as different approaches, symbolic reasoning, expert systems, and later statistical machine learning and neural networks, rose and fell in favor.

Facts

Origin Year

1956 1

The year of the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, where John McCarthy proposed the field's name.

Core Concern

How to build systems that reason, learn, perceive or use language in ways that would be called intelligent if done by a person. 2

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Computer Vision

Source Wikipedia: Computer Vision

John McCarthy

John McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence for the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, the workshop that founded the field as a distinct research area.

Source The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital RevolutionWalter Isaacson

Machine Learning

Machine learning is studied as a field within artificial intelligence.

Source Wikipedia: Machine Learning

Natural Language Processing

Source Wikipedia: Natural Language Processing

Robotics

Source Wikipedia: Robotics

Includes

John McCarthy

Source ACM A.M. Turing Award Citations

Lisp

Source The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital RevolutionWalter Isaacson

Prolog

Source Wikipedia: Prolog

Sources

1. The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Walter Isaacson, Simon and Schuster, 2014

2. Encyclopedia Britannica: Computer Science

Encyclopedia Britannica Editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc, 2024View the Source

Wikipedia: Artificial Intelligence

Wikimedia FoundationLead section

Quote, Lead section

Artificial intelligence is the capability of computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making.

View the Source

ACM A.M. Turing Award Citations

Association for Computing MachineryIncludes: John McCarthyView the Source

Wikipedia: Machine Learning

Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Machine Learning, Introduction section

Quote, Associated With: Machine Learning, Introduction section