A wide-ranging discipline of computer science that at its core seeks to make computers behave more like humans. The term was coined by John McCarthy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956. Artificial intelligence (AI) attempts to resolve problems by “reasoning,” similar to the process used by the human mind. AI involves the capability of a machine to learn (to remember results produced on a previous trial and to modify the operation accordingly in subsequent trials) or to reason (to analyze the results produced in similar operations and select the most favorable outcome). Today, applications of artificial intelligence include voice recognition, robotics, neural networks and expert systems (i.e., systems that can make decisions an expert would otherwise have to make to, for example, forecast financial performance, or diagnose illnesses).