One of the greatest innovators in the field of machine learning was John McCarthy, widely recognized as the "Father of Artificial Intelligence".
In the mid 1950s, McCarthy coined the term "Artificial Intelligence" and defined it as "the science of making intelligent machines".
The algorithms has been here since then. Why is AI more interesting now?
The answer is:
1 Computing power has not been strong enough
2 Computer storage has not been large enough
3 Big data has not been available
4 Fast Internet has not been available
Another strong force is the major investments from big companies (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, YouTube) because their datasets became much too big to handle traditionally.