Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Simple Definition

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer system to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, things like understanding language, recognizing images, making decisions, and solving problems.

AI is not one single technology. It’s a broad field that includes machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and more.

AI in Everyday Life

You encounter AI constantly without realizing it:

• Spam filters that identify junk email
• Recommendation engines on Netflix or Spotify
• Navigation apps that predict traffic
• Face recognition on your phone
• Chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude

Narrow AI vs. General AI

Almost all AI today is narrow AI. It’s designed to do one specific type of task very well. ChatGPT handles language. Image recognition systems identify photos. They can’t transfer skills across domains.

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): AI that can reason and learn across any domain the way humans do, does not yet exist, though it’s an active area of research.

Why AI Has Taken Off

Three factors came together to produce the current AI boom:

1. More data: the internet generated vast training datasets
2. Better hardware: GPUs made training large models feasible
3. Better algorithms: transformer architecture unlocked major capability gains

Related Terms

• Machine Learning, the technique AI systems use to learn from data
• Deep Learning, a subset of machine learning using neural networks
• Generative AI, AI that creates new content like text and images
• LLM, the type of AI behind ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini