What is Artificial Intelligence? How Does AI Work?

Less than a decade after helping the Allied Forces win World War II by breaking the Nazi encryption machine Enigma, mathematician Alan Turing changed history a second time with a simple question: "Can machines think?" Turing's 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence and its subsequent Turing Test established the fundamental goal and vision of AI. At its core, AI is the branch of computer science that aims to answer Turing's question in the affirmative. It is the endeavor to replicate or simulate human intelligence in machines. The expansive goal of AI has given rise to many questions and debates.