What is AI?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) - defined.
What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
The idea of “thinking machines” has fascinated people for centuries, but the modern term Artificial Intelligence (AI) first entered the spotlight in the 1950s. Back then, researchers dreamed of building machines that could reason, solve problems, and even mimic aspects of human thought.
Defining AI
At its core, AI is the study and engineering of computer systems that can perform tasks we usually associate with human intelligence—such as understanding language, recognizing patterns, learning from experience, and making decisions.
Unlike traditional software that follows step-by-step instructions, AI systems adapt by processing data, identifying patterns, and applying that knowledge to new situations. In other words, instead of being told exactly what to do, they learn how to improve over time.
Why AI Matters Today
AI has been around for decades, but recent breakthroughs have pushed it into the mainstream:
- Faster hardware: Graphics processors (GPUs) and specialized AI chips make it affordable to train massive models.
- New algorithms: Deep learning and transformer models (the tech behind ChatGPT and image generators) unlocked new capabilities.
- Huge datasets: The internet provides billions of examples to train AI systems.
Together, these advances turned AI from a research dream into practical tools—powering assistants like Siri, chatbots like ChatGPT, and apps that can generate images or help doctors analyze medical scans.
AI in the Real World
Businesses, governments, and consumers are now racing to adopt AI. Companies use it to improve products, automate tasks, and uncover insights in data. Regulators are exploring how to govern it responsibly. And everyday people are using AI to write, brainstorm, learn, and create in ways that weren’t possible just a few years ago.
The launch of ChatGPT in 2022 was a turning point: millions of people suddenly had direct access to a conversational AI built on a Large Language Model (LLM). This opened the door for public imagination and made AI part of daily life.
What Comes Next?
AI is better understood as a set of nested disciplines that build on one another.
The diagram highlights how the field stacks up:
- Artificial Intelligence: The broadest circle, covering any system that performs tasks we associate with human intelligence.
- Machine Learning: A core subset of AI that focuses on algorithms that learn from data instead of following hand-coded rules.
- Deep Learning: A specialized subset of machine learning that uses large neural networks to uncover patterns in high-dimensional data like images, audio, and language.