Alan Turing changed history for the second time with a simple question: “Can machines think?” Less than a decade after breaking the Nazi encryption machine Enigma and helping the Allies win World War II, mathematician Alan Turing changed history once more with a simple question: “Can machines think?”

The core purpose and vision of artificial intelligence were set by Turing’s work “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (1950) and the Turing Test that followed. At its most basic level, AI is a discipline of computer science whose goal is to respond yes to Turing’s question. It is the goal of artificial intelligence researchers to recreate or imitate human intellect in robots.

Artificial intelligence’s broad purpose has sparked a slew of issues and arguments. So much so that there is no commonly acknowledged definition of the field.