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In this chapter, I shall not attempt to develop anything like a comprehensive account of the development or current state of artificial intelligence (AI). Since I want to situate my discussion in this chapter and the next in the context of changing relations between society and technology, I will concentrate mainly, although not wholly, on tracing AI through a range of common uses, divergent histories, economic interests and power structures. AI, at once a specialist field and global industry, is often presented as immutable or inevitable. But AI is plural and pluralizing, woven of a whole tissue of different cultural conversations, social practices and technological assemblages. To say this does not mean ignoring the technical knowledge which underpins AI, or placing the whole weight of emphasis upon the social, cultural and political dimensions of the digital revolution. But it is vital, I shall argue, to see that other forms of power, different stocks of knowledge and other ideologies lurk inside the discourse of AI – all of which have unintended consequences and impact upon social development in the current period. In the opening section of the chapter, I outline some general notions connected with the development of AI, which will help construct key underlying themes of this book as a whole. My focus is on unravelling the many different definitions of AI. In the second section, I situate AI in the broad context of both globalization and everyday life. Notwithstanding the dominance of technical thinking which privileges a ‘black box model’ of inputs and outputs, my argument is that the rise of automated intelligent machines should be studied as expressing or incorporating forms of sociality, stocks of cultural knowledge, and unequal power relations that provide a focal point for the investigation of AI.