What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the broad field of computer science focused on building systems that can perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence — such as understanding language, recognizing images, making decisions, and learning from experience.
Why It Matters
AI is the umbrella term for every technique covered in this dictionary. Understanding what AI is — and isn't — is the starting point for grasping machine learning, deep learning, large language models, and everything built on top of them. Businesses, governments, and individuals increasingly rely on AI for automation, insight generation, and decision support.
How It Works
Modern AI systems typically follow a three-step pattern: (1) collect data about the problem domain, (2) train a model to find patterns in that data, and (3) deploy the model to make predictions or decisions on new inputs. Approaches range from rule-based expert systems (symbolic AI) to statistical methods like machine learning and deep learning.
AI can be categorized as:
- Narrow AI (ANI) — systems designed for specific tasks (image classification, chatbots, recommendation engines). All current AI is narrow.
- General AI (AGI) — hypothetical systems with human-level reasoning across all domains. This remains a research goal.
Example
When you ask ChatGPT a question, you're using an AI system. The language model behind it was trained on text data, learned patterns in language, and can generate coherent responses to novel prompts. Other everyday examples include spam filters, navigation apps predicting traffic, and voice assistants like Siri.