People wanted smart machines long ago. In 1950, Alan Turing asked a big question. He asked if machines could think. He created a test for this.
In 1956, scientists had a meeting in Dartmouth. They coined the term artificial intelligence. They felt very positive about the future. They built simple machines to solve games.
However, the work was very hard. Computers were small and slow. Governments stopped giving money to scientists. People call these quiet times AI winters.
Today, computers are different. We have massive databases and great compute power. Now, smart programs help us every day. They mimic human minds very well.