What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is on everyone's lips these days. Between fascination and apprehension, it fuels countless discussions in the media, education, industry and politics. But what's really behind the term?

In this article, we offer a clear and accessible introduction to artificial intelligence: its definitions, origins, concrete applications, and why it's essential to take an interest in it today.

A simple definition of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) encompasses all the techniques that enable a machine to reproduce certain human skills: learning, reasoning, perceiving, understanding language, even creating. Unlike traditional software, AI systems don't just follow set instructions: they can improve their performance based on data.

The heart of modern AI lies in machine learning, a branch that enables algorithms to learn from data without being explicitly programmed for each task. A particularly powerful subset is deep learning, based on artificial neural networks inspired by the workings of the human brain.

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A little history

The idea of a thinking machine is not new. It dates back to the time of Alan Turing, the famous British mathematician, who in 1950 asked the question: "Can machines think? He then proposed the Turing Test to determine whether a machine was capable of impersonating a human in a conversation.

The term "artificial intelligence" was officially introduced in 1956 at the Dartmouth Conference, by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky and other pioneering researchers. AI then went through several periods of hype and stagnation (known as "AI winters") until its resurrection in the 2010s thanks to a combination of three key factors:

• Increased computing power
• Access to huge volumes of data (Big Data)
• Progress in deep learning

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AIs already present in our daily lives

Far from being a futuristic concept, AI is already omnipresent in our lives. Here are a few concrete examples:

• Content recommendations: whether on Netflix, YouTube or Spotify, algorithms analyze your habits to suggest movies or music you might like.
• Voice assistants: Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant use natural language processing (NLP) technologies to understand and answer your questions.
• Mailbox filters: anti-spam systems classify unwanted messages using predictive models.
• Autonomous vehicles: driverless cars analyze the environment in real time to make decisions.
• Machine translation: tools such as DeepL or Google Translate rely on neural models to translate with ever greater precision.

Why should we care?

Understanding AI means better understanding the world around us. This field raises major issues:

• Ethics: How can we ensure that AI respects our values? What about algorithmic bias or transparency?
• Economic: What skills will be in demand tomorrow? Which jobs will emerge or disappear?
• Education: How can we prepare the younger generation for these technologies?

AI for everyone

At Learning Robots, we believe that AI should not be reserved for a technological elite. Thanks to fun, visual tools like our AlphAI solution, it's possible to explore AI concepts in concrete terms as early as middle school or high school, or as part of corporate training programs.

Intrigued by AI?

We invite you to explore this exciting field further with the Learning Robots solution.

And if you have any questions or would like to set up an introduction to AI, please don't hesitate to contact !

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