Artificial intelligence

It is a field of research in computer science that develops and studies methods and software that enable machines to perceive their environment and use learning and intelligence to take actions that maximize their chances of achieving defined goals.

[5] Artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline in 1956,[6] and the field went through multiple cycles of optimism throughout its history,[7][8] followed by periods of disappointment and loss of funding, known as AI winters.

[51] Early work, based on Noam Chomsky's generative grammar and semantic networks, had difficulty with word-sense disambiguation[f] unless restricted to small domains called "micro-worlds" (due to the common sense knowledge problem[29]).

Another type of local search is evolutionary computation, which aims to iteratively improve a set of candidate solutions by "mutating" and "recombining" them, selecting only the fittest to survive each generation.

[112] Deep learning has profoundly improved the performance of programs in many important subfields of artificial intelligence, including computer vision, speech recognition, natural language processing, image classification,[113] and others.

[146] In 2024, Google DeepMind introduced SIMA, a type of AI capable of autonomously playing nine previously unseen open-world video games by observing screen output, as well as executing short, specific tasks in response to natural language instructions.

[152] In January 2025, Microsoft proposed the technique rStar-Math that leverages Monte Carlo tree search and step-by-step reasoning, enabling a relatively small language model like Qwen-7B to solve 53% of the AIME 2024 and 90% of the MATH benchmark problems.

[153] Alternatively, dedicated models for mathematical problem solving with higher precision for the outcome including proof of theorems have been developed such as AlphaTensor, AlphaGeometry and AlphaProof all from Google DeepMind,[154] Llemma from EleutherAI[155] or Julius.

Finance is one of the fastest growing sectors where applied AI tools are being deployed: from retail online banking to investment advice and insurance, where automated "robot advisers" have been in use for some years.

[171][177][178] Artificial intelligent (AI) agents are software entities designed to perceive their environment, make decisions, and take actions autonomously to achieve specific goals.

[197] A few examples are energy storage, medical diagnosis, military logistics, applications that predict the result of judicial decisions, foreign policy, or supply chain management.

Artificial intelligence is used in astronomy to analyze increasing amounts of available data and applications, mainly for "classification, regression, clustering, forecasting, generation, discovery, and the development of new scientific insights."

During the 2024 Indian elections, US$50 million was spent on authorized AI-generated content, notably by creating deepfakes of allied (including sometimes deceased) politicians to better engage with voters, and by translating speeches to various local languages.

AI-powered devices and services, such as virtual assistants and IoT products, continuously collect personal information, raising concerns about intrusive data gathering and unauthorized access by third parties.

The loss of privacy is further exacerbated by AI's ability to process and combine vast amounts of data, potentially leading to a surveillance society where individual activities are constantly monitored and analyzed without adequate safeguards or transparency.

[214][215] Another discussed approach is to envision a separate sui generis system of protection for creations generated by AI to ensure fair attribution and compensation for human authors.

[246] In 2017, several researchers[l] showed that it was mathematically impossible for COMPAS to accommodate all possible measures of fairness when the base rates of re-offense were different for whites and blacks in the data.

[256] Another machine learning system designed to help effectively allocate medical resources was found to classify patients with asthma as being at "low risk" of dying from pneumonia.

[p][278] The methodology of speculating about future employment levels has been criticised as lacking evidential foundation, and for implying that technology, rather than social policy, creates unemployment, as opposed to redundancies.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom argued that if one gives almost any goal to a sufficiently powerful AI, it may choose to destroy humanity to achieve it (he used the example of a paperclip factory manager).

[286] Stuart Russell gives the example of household robot that tries to find a way to kill its owner to prevent it from being unplugged, reasoning that "you can't fetch the coffee if you're dead.

Some researchers warn that future AI models may develop dangerous capabilities (such as the potential to drastically facilitate bioterrorism) and that once released on the Internet, they cannot be deleted everywhere if needed.

[325] Most EU member states had released national AI strategies, as had Canada, China, India, Japan, Mauritius, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, U.S., and Vietnam.

[325] The Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence was launched in June 2020, stating a need for AI to be developed in accordance with human rights and democratic values, to ensure public confidence and trust in the technology.

[328] In 2024, the Council of Europe created the first international legally binding treaty on AI, called the "Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law".

[333] 28 countries including the United States, China, and the European Union issued a declaration at the start of the summit, calling for international co-operation to manage the challenges and risks of artificial intelligence.

The study of logic led directly to Alan Turing's theory of computation, which suggested that a machine, by shuffling symbols as simple as "0" and "1", could simulate any conceivable form of mathematical reasoning.

[t] They and their students produced programs that the press described as "astonishing":[u] computers were learning checkers strategies, solving word problems in algebra, proving logical theorems and speaking English.

They warn that this may be a moral blind spot analogous to slavery or factory farming, which could lead to large-scale suffering if sentient AI is created and carelessly exploited.

[415] Robot designer Hans Moravec, cyberneticist Kevin Warwick and inventor Ray Kurzweil have predicted that humans and machines may merge in the future into cyborgs that are more capable and powerful than either.