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