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both positive and negative effects (but we’ll cover that later). Although many technical and financial challenges still must be overcome to create AI-enabled computers and robots that can do anything that humans can do, it’s clear that artificial intelligence is here to stay. Seventy-six percent of Americans surveyed by Gallup and Northeastern University in 2017 “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that AI would fundamentally change the way people lived and worked in the next decade. Seventy-seven percent were “very positive” or “mostly positive” about the effects AI would have on these areas.

DID YOU KNOW? The term “artificial intelligence” may sound futuristic, but it was actually first coined in 1956 at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence workshop, which was organized by a mathematics professor named John McCarthy. In his plan for the event, he stated that the conference was “to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.”

USES OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AI is used in a wide range of fields, including shipping, banking, transportation, accounting, health care, astronomy, agriculture, human resources, security, and the military. Amazon, Google, IBM, Apple, Netflix, eBay, and countless other companies, large and small, are incorporating AI into their products and services. In fact, the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that tech giants spent $20–$30 billion on AI worldwide in 2016. This number has increased each year. Government agencies and militaries all over the world are also trying to harness the power of AI. The following paragraphs provide some examples of how AI is used in various industries.

CHAPTER 1: WHAT DO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SCIENTISTS DO? 13