AI has certainly been at the front of media and business recently.

But given the long history of AI, why is it suddenly centre stage in the world right now?

In this Chapter we break down the reasons, and give the context for the current 'AI revolution'. This helps put the modern AI systems, and the social, business, economic, and political sentiments around AI in perspective.

The current interest in Artificial Intelligence is not a temporary fascination. It's a fundamental shift. The best analogy for this is with the emergence of Information Technology or 'IT' in the 1980s. Perhaps you lived through the change from a world without computers, to one where they proliferate across all aspects of our lives. Or you can try to imagine how big a shift that was. Recent developments in AI are shaping it to be a turning point on a similar scale.