The modern definition of artificial
intelligence (or AI) is
"the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent
agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which
maximizes its chances of success. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956,
defines it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent
machines." Other names for the field have been proposed, such as computational
intelligence, synthetic intelligence or computational rationality.
The term artificial intelligence is also used to describe a property
of machines or programs: the intelligence that the system demonstrates. Among
the traits that researchers hope machines will exhibit are reasoning, knowledge,
planning, learning, communication, perception and the ability to move and
manipulate objects. General intelligence (or "strong AI") has not yet
been achieved and is a long-term goal of AI research.
AI research uses tools and insights from many fields, including computer
science,
psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, operations
research, economics, control theory, probability, optimization and logic. AI
research also overlaps with tasks such as robotics, control systems, scheduling,
data mining, logistics, speech recognition, facial recognition and many oaths.