What Is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence refers to computer systems that are capable of performing tasks traditionally associated with human intelligence — such as making predictions, identifying objects, interpreting speech and generating natural language. AI systems learn how to do so by processing massive amounts of data and looking for patterns to model in their own decision-making. In many cases, humans will supervise an AI’s learning process, reinforcing good decisions and discouraging bad ones, but some AI systems are designed to learn without supervision.

Over time, AI systems improve on their performance of specific tasks, allowing them to adapt to new inputs and make decisions without being explicitly programmed to do so. In essence, artificial intelligence is about teaching machines to think and learn like humans, with the goal of automating work and solving problems more efficiently.