Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science focused on creating intelligent machines that can perform tasks like humans. The field was born in 1956 at a workshop where Allen Newell, Herbert Simon, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, and Arthur Samuel became the founders of AI research. They and their students produced early programs that could learn checkers strategies, solve word problems in algebra, prove logical theorems, and speak English. By the 1960s, AI research was heavily funded by the Department of Defense and laboratories were established worldwide.