What is artificial intelligence?

What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence is the study and engineering of systems that perform tasks associated with intelligence, such as solving problems, recognizing patterns, understanding language, and making decisions.

It is a broad field, not a single algorithm or product. A program that plans moves in a game and a model that transcribes speech can both belong to AI.

Different approaches to intelligent behavior

Symbolic approaches represent knowledge using explicit concepts and rules. A planning system, for example, can reason about which steps are allowed and which sequence reaches a goal.

Machine-learning approaches use examples to learn patterns. A handwriting recognizer can learn from labeled images instead of requiring a programmer to describe every possible way someone writes a digit.

Real applications often combine approaches. A model might identify an object in a photograph, while conventional software checks whether a proposed action involving that object is allowed.

AI is broader than generative AI

Generative AI creates outputs such as text, images, or audio. Other AI systems classify existing information, estimate future values, or search for solutions.

A model predicting next week's inventory needs does not have to write an essay to be useful. Similarly, a conversational interface is not a requirement for intelligence-related computation.

Judge systems by the task

A productive definition of an AI application includes its input, its intended output, and how success is measured. For a speech recognizer, that might mean the accuracy of the transcript across different speakers.

This task-based view avoids treating AI as a mysterious property that a product simply possesses. It makes capabilities, limitations, and comparisons easier to discuss.