ABSTRACT
Artificial intelligence (AI) is an approach to understanding behaviour based on the assumption that intelligence can best be analysed by trying to reproduce it. In practice, reproduction means simulation by computer. AI is, therefore, part of computer science. Its history is a relatively short one - as an independent field of study it dates back to the mid-1950s. The AI approach contrasts with an older method of studying cognition, that of experimental psychology. Psychology has long had intelligence among its central concerns, intelligence not just as measured in IQ tests, but in the broader sense in which it is required for thinking, reasoning and learning, and in their prerequisites — high-level perceptual skills, the mental representation of information and the ability to use language.
