Artificial intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the field of computer science that aims to have machines perform tasks that normally require human intelligence: understanding language, recognizing images, solving problems or making decisions. Unlike a classic program, which follows fixed rules written by a person, most of today’s AI learns patterns from large amounts of data ( machine learning ✕ Machine learning is the branch of AI in which a system learns from examples instead of following hand-coded rules. The more data, the better it generalizes. More in the glossary → ). The term covers very different things: from your email’s spam ✕ Spam is unwanted bulk messages, usually by email — often advertising, but sometimes a carrier for phishing or malware. More in the glossary → filter to assistants that generate text or images. It is important to distinguish this "narrow" AI, specialized in specific tasks, from the idea of a human-like general intelligence, which does not exist today. AI is a very powerful tool, but its results depend on the data it is trained on and still need human judgment.