The man we know today as the father of AI, John McCarthy, is the one to coin the term in a 1956 conference. He invented the Lisp programming language in 1958, and in 1959, he founded the MIT AI Lab along with Marvin Minsky. Essentially, Artficial Intelligence (AI/ machine intelligence), compared to the natural intelligence of humans and other animals, is intelligence machines demonstrate. When a machine mimics such cognitive functions as learning and problem solving, we think of artificial intelligence. Such a machine perceives its environment and takes action to maximize its chances of success in achieving its goals.

The twenty-first century has seen an upsurge in AI with new techniques, advances in computer power, large amounts of data, and theoretical understanding. These help solve many challenges in fields like computer science.