Artificial Intelligence in the Rising Wave of Deep Learning: The Historical Path and Future Outlook [Perspectives]

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science and a technology aimed at developing the theories, methods, algorithms, and applications for simulating and extending human intelligence. Modern AI enables going from an old world-where people give computers rules to solve problems-to a new world-where people give computers problems directly and the machines learn how to solve them on their own using a set of algorithms. An algorithm is a self-contained sequence of instructions and actions to be performed by a computational machine. Starting from an initial state and initial input, the instructions describe computational steps, which, when executed, proceed through a finite number of well-defined successive states, eventually producing an output and terminating at a final ending state. AI algorithms are a rich set of algorithms used to perform AI tasks, notably those pertaining to perception and cognition that involve learning from data and experiences simulating human intelligence.