There are many ‘firsts’ in the world of artificial intelligence and debates about what specific programs claim the ‘first’ spot. That said, the first AI were generally rule-based, simple systems with narrow capabilities and tasks.  The first successful AI program was written by Christopher Strachey in 1951, although many of the programs we think of as ‘AI’ were the rule-based systems developed in the 1970s.  The first AI machine was the WABOT-1, a humanoid robot built in Japan in 1972.