Artificial Intelligence (AI) is intelligence and self-awareness demonstrated by a physical but inorganic artifact. AI researchers include experts from a coalition of diverse disciplines including computer science (software written for computer hardware) and psychology (unraveling the human software running on biological hardware).

John McCarthy is credited as first coining the term "artificial intelligence" in the August 31, 1955 paper he coauthored, "The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence." This research project took place in the Summer of 1956 and its proposal states in the first paragraph that "The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it" (1). McCarthy's definition continues to be the accepted broad definition of AI. Science fiction (SF) authors internalized this definition in their works that involve AI. Patricia S. Warrick explicitly states the human focus of AI built into McCarthy's definition when she writes in her 1980 book, The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction, "Artificial intelligence...attempts to discover and describe aspects of human intelligence that can be simulated by machines" (11).

SF is the primary literature field in which authors explore stories about AI. SF authors are generally concerned only with "strong AI" or self-aware, intelligent machines that mimic human cognition. However, there are a few stories that address "weak AI" which are programs that act as if they are intelligent, but not self-aware. SF authors have written about the possibilities of AI as well as the issues surrounding artificial intelligence. There are three main types of AI stories: analog dystopic AI (1872-1930), digital utopic AI (1930-1950), and digital dystopic AI (1950-Present).

Analog dystopic AI stories first appear in the late 19th century and they are characterized by anxieties about the dangerous nature of analog machine intelligences (built of gears and cogs instead of transistors). The first reference to machine intelligence occurs in Samuel Butler's satire Erewhon (1872). Butler accomplished his goal of satirizing the theory of evolution by applying evolution to machines. These machines become self-aware and come to control man. Other stories from this period involved automatons (mechanical men that displayed intelligence) that were built for an intellectual purpose such as playing chess. An example of this is Ambrose Bierce's "Moxon's Master" (1894) which had a dystopic ending that involved the mechanical chess player killing its creator after being checkmated. These dystopian stories of analog AI continued to dominate the first three decades of the 20th century. Karl Capek's R.U.R. (1921), which introduced the term "robot" to the English language, is a another prime example of this storytelling.

American SF ignited in the 1930s with a shift to digital utopian stories that feature digital machine intelligences (e.g., positronic brains, transistors, and integrated circuits). John W. Campbell's story, "When the Atoms Fail" (1930) is the first to describe a machine that is unquestionably a digital computer (though not self-aware). His next computer story, "The Last Evolution" (1932) is about a machine that has independent thought. In the 1940s Campbell helped Isaac Asimov create the Three Laws of Robotics in his robot stories and Asimov establishes himself as "the father of robot stories in SF" (Warrick, 54). These digital utopic AI stories present machines as predictable reasoning beings that follow rules that allow them to live and work with humans. They do not explore the philosophical ramifications of the creation of artificial life. Additionally, Asimov's 1950 publication of I, Robot, which is a collection of his first robot short stories, can be said to be an end point to the digital utopic AI era.

After World War II, SF authors wrote digital dystopic AI stories to explore questions concerning the ethics of a science and technology that produced the nuclear bomb (and the first digital computers). Two notable works from the early part of this era are Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). These authors place an emphasis on the philosophical and ethical conflicts that may develop when humanity creates new life in the form of artificial brains that mirror the human mind. More recently, depictions of self-aware AIs have become extremely elaborate as the real world entered a much more computerized and inter-networked era. William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984) in particular and cyberpunk in general further expand the scope of digital dystopic AI stories by interlinking AI, cybernetics, and global capitalism.

Thus, AI is a historically embedded concept in SF literature. The science and technology behind AI has evolved from mere conjecture to a closer possibility. Authors of AI stories take the science and technology of their historical moments and extrapolate the forms that AI might take. Furthermore, AI authors discuss, both implicitly and explicitly, the philosophical and ethical issues that inevitably arise with new technology and more specifically with the creation of self-aware machines.