There’s a lot of talk today about artificial intelligence and the impact it will have on the future. But the term gets thrown around so much that it’s falling victim to the Kleenex syndrome—the label is so overused that the meaning gets diluted and applied to things that aren’t actually AI. What actually is AI and what isn’t? Does it even really exist?

What is Artificial Intelligence? 

Artificial intelligence was first defined in the 1950s as any task performed by a machine if a human would have to use intelligence to accomplish the same task. Simply put, AI acts on a situation the same way a human would. If a human would understand a conversation and give an answer, so would AI. If a human could analyze information and make future plans, so would AI.

AI is based on algorithms. It uses computing power to solve specific problems faster and often more accurately than humans can. Much of AI is based on statistics and finding trends and patterns in data.