Background Information
The beginnings of artificial intelligence have many origins from philosophy and fiction to just pure imagination. According to AI magazine, the history of artificial intelligence is a history of “fantasies, possibilities, demonstrations, and promise” (Buchanan, 2005). The idea of artificial intelligence has been written in fiction novels since the time of Homer but it’s only in the last few years that we have actually made progress in creating these machines and programs. There are many science fiction novels written about the creation and use of artificial intelligence with I, Robot written by Isaac Asimov being a more well-known novel depicting artificial intelligence in the future.
Before when artificial intelligence was just an idea, it was generally associated with robots. However, artificial intelligence is not just about robots, it is “understanding the nature of intelligent thought and action using computers as experimental devices” (Buchanan, 2005). Meaning artificial intelligence is not just about robots performing tasks that humans do, but to create a computer that can have and understand human thought.