Elements for a History of Artificial Intelligence

International audienceArtificial intelligence (AI) is a young scientific field, which like other domains of information processing sciences, was born in the middle of the XXth century, with the arrival of the first computers. However, much more long-standing concerns have contributed to its final emergence. They can be broadly articulated around two main issues: the formalization of reasoning and learning mechanisms and the design of machines having autonomous capabilities in terms of computation and action. Over time, such machines have been first dreamed, before being designed and made real. The progressive achievements have fed the imagination of philosophers, but also writers, movie makers, and other artists. This is the reason why in the few elements of the great historical epic that we sketch here, references to all sectors of human creativity are involved