AI / IA

The term « artificial intelligence », coined by John McCarthy, is often shortened to « AI » (or « IA » in French, for intelligence artificielle).
It is defined by one of its creators, Marvin Lee Minsky, as « the construction of computer programs that engage in tasks which, for now, are performed more satisfactorily by human beings because they require high-level mental processes such as perceptual learning, memory organisation and critical reasoning ».

It brings together an « artificial » side, achieved through computers or sophisticated electronic processes, and an « intelligence » side, tied to its goal of imitating behaviour.

This imitation can apply to reasoning — for example, in games or in mathematics — to natural-language understanding, to perception (visual interpretation of images and scenes, auditory understanding of speech, or input from other sensors), or to controlling a robot in an unknown or hostile environment.