AI Startups: 18 Early-Stage Companies to Watch

The term ’artificial intelligence’ was first coined by computer scientist John McCarthy in the mid-20th century. AI’s come a long way since then—now, it’s a rapidly growing field that deals with the creation of machines that can perform tasks that typically require human cognition, such as learning, reasoning, recognising patterns, making predictions about the future, and—more recently—holding conversations and making art. 

Whilst AI is the broad classification for machines simulating human behaviour and tasks, there are many branches that fall under this category. Of these, machine learning is perhaps the most well-known. Machine learning involves repeated training to achieve a known target where the process is unknown. Deep learning, a subset of machine learning, refers to the creation of ever more complex neural networks in an effort to have them solve more difficult problems with less human direction.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is another widely-used branch of AI, where computer systems are built to interpret human language—think Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri. NLP is particularly useful as it is able to quickly process large amounts of data.