Exploring the Artificial Intelligence Landscape

Since the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), as conceived by Allan Turing in his iconic article “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” in 1950 and later inaugurated as a field of computer science during the “Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence” in 1956 organized by McCarthy et al., ΑΙ has blossomed, facing its ups and downs, or as they have been called summers and winters. Nowadays, AI demonstrates unprecedented capabilities in several tasks such as image and speech recognition, autonomous driving, predictive analytics, and more, raising in tandem ethical and societal dilemmas revolving around its trustworthiness or even its potential domination over humankind. In this chapter, we aim to elucidate the evolution of AI, identifying and exploring the scientific and technological achievements that led to the current status of AI systems in different domains. We will also pinpoint the ethical, legal, and societal issues that emerged due to the rapid growth of AI, highlighting several concerns including data privacy, security, and algorithmic bias, entailing the need for robust frameworks and ethical guidelines, which ensure AI explainability and trustworthiness. Furthermore, we will strive to highlight potential advancements of AI in the near future, contemplating theoretical research fields such as artificial general intelligence as an attempt to create software with human-like intelligence and the ability for self-teaching, as well as existing AI technologies such as Google’s AlphaZero or AlphaProof that have already surpassed human capabilities in specific tasks.