Without any pretence of omniscience, let’s see what is meant by artificial intelligence, what its history has been so far, and its presence in the collective imagination. We will also see how artificial intelligence brings together, in a single definition, radically different approaches, what its functional levels are, and, again, what are the main artificial intelligence techniques currently in use in the various application areas that distinguish it.
Artificial intelligence has always been much more than a technology, it is a discipline that combines the contribution of many sciences with the irresistible charm deriving from its analogy with human intelligence. If on the one hand, we are instinctively drawn positively by its potential, the other side of the coin involves the fear caused by the fact that an AI could replace humans, especially in employment terms, making obsolete those tasks that currently involve human beings in the job market.
This vision of the future, capable of projecting lights and shadows at the same time, will have to be regulated before AI evolves exclusively towards a speculative direction, which would hardly coincide with the well-being and development of our society, ending up instead accentuating those imbalances that are always more frequent nowadays, just think of the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Artificial intelligence represents something useful, necessary, already widely used and at the same time still to be discovered and applied, with all the pros and cons of the case, which derive from how we decide to implement its technologies. The timing for consideration of artificial intelligence cannot be further deferred. It is necessary to take note of its developments, to realise how its growing role in innovation is already contributing to changing our way of communicating, working, and living forever.
What is artificial intelligence?
The term “artificial” appeared for the first time in 1955, specifically on August 31 of that year, when John McCarthy and a group of other famous computing pioneers submitted a request for funding to the Rockefeller Foundation for “a proposed project for a summer research in Dartmouth on Artificial Intelligence”.
AI took billions of dollars to reach the present day, where artificial intelligence in many ways is still considered an emerging technology, eternally destined to chase that computing power capable of running a series of algorithms written in many cases several decades ago.
As one might expect, there are countless definitions and classifications to try to explain to us what artificial intelligence is, partly due to the extraordinary popularity it enjoys, partly due to a multidisciplinary approach, which in a context of synthesis, tends to make the point of view or aspect in which he finds the greatest interest prevails. Any attempt at an omniscient definition is therefore to be considered a lost undertaking from the start.
Wanting to adopt a complete and recently published definition, we take inspiration from the work carried out by the European Commission which, in 2024, appointed an independent research group that identified some fundamental points for defining artificial intelligence:
• These systems designed by man in the form of software (and possibly hardware) which act in the physical or digital dimension and which, given a complex objective, perceive their environment through the acquisition of structured data, fall within the scope of artificial intelligence. or not, interpreting them and reasoning on the knowledge or processing the information derived from them, deciding the best actions to take to achieve the given objective
• AI systems can use logical rules or learn a numerical model, and can also adapt their behaviour by analysing the effects that their previous actions have had on the environment
• As a scientific discipline, artificial intelligence includes different approaches and techniques, such as machine learning (of which deep learning and reinforcement learning are specific examples), mechanical reasoning (which includes planning, programming, knowledge representation, reasoning, search, and optimisation) and robotics (which includes control, perception, sensors and actuators and the integration of all other techniques into cyber-physical systems)
While it may seem convoluted in form initially, a scientifically derived text like the one just presented unmistakably communicates artificial intelligence as an exceptionally diverse array of technological systems, capable of autonomous action to achieve particular objectives.
Let’s pause and trace back the origins of this fascination with artificial intelligence, beginning with its inception and its early conceptual spread, predating its technological proliferation
The Genesis of Artificial Intelligence: Exploring Its Origins
The frequent association of artificial intelligence with human intelligence and robotics has created a phenomenon that goes far beyond its technological manifestation and its concrete applications, influencing the collective imagination at various levels.
Well before emerging as a practical technology, starting from the 1950s, artificial intelligence was in fact the protagonist of narrative and literary debate, with a constant media presence. This is demonstrated, among other things, by the numerous cinematographic experiences that have seen her as a leading actress in front of an audience of millions of spectators, belonging to various generations.
Artificial intelligence is itself something intangible, bits that need to be represented through a physical manifestation. This would explain the frequent association between AI and machines, in particular robots or humanoid automation animated by a mysterious and fascinating synthetic consciousness.
The relationship between man and machine is a constant in our history. In the third century BC, Philo of Byzantium, a Greek scientist and writer, invented the automatic servant of Philon, a humanoid robot that, through an incredibly complex mechanism for the time, poured wine into a cup.
It worked through tubes and springs, absolutely unaware of what electronics and computing were, but it already fulfilled a practical purpose. Philosophy was no different in starting to question the possibility of artificial life.
In the seventeenth century, the pages of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan proposed the analogy between human life and the artificial life of machines, comparing organs to devices capable of giving movement to automatons. In the eighteenth century, the essay l’Homme Machine, by Julien Offray de La Mettrie, defined man as a mechanism, only more complex than others, with a soul determined by the body itself, also a mechanism whose complexity would have been explained with the advancement of scientific studies.
It is the vision that assimilates human intelligence to artificial intelligence, with the possibility of replicating the mechanism of the human brain in a machine, which for example inspires cybernetics and the imagery of science fiction. The debate has reached the present day with a succession of suggestive inspirations.
In art and culture, the relationship between artificial intelligence and the science fiction genre has always been very intense, both in literature and in films which have often adapted the screenplays of authors such as Philip K. Dick or Isaac Asimov, who inspired the iconic I, Robot, played by one of the best Will Smith of his career.
