What People Mean by Artificial Intelligence

One commonly given definition describes it as the overarching concept in which a machine performs a task that normally would require human intelligence.1 The term's coiner, John McCarthy, defined it as the science and engineering of making intelligent machines. IBM notes that AI categories and terminology may differ and overlap from one source to the next.2

A name and a definition

In the early 1950s there were various names for the field of thinking machines, including cybernetics, automata theory and complex information processing, and McCarthy picked the name Artificial Intelligence for the new field.3

Terms that sit inside the term

Machine learning is described as a subset of AI in which a machine learns from experience or training data, and deep learning as a subset of machine learning in which the neural network is more complex, with more layers. Generative AI is described as models that learn the patterns and structure of their training data and then generate new data with similar characteristics.

Narrow versus general

People also use AI to mean different levels of ability. One classification scheme calls current AI weak or narrow and describes strong or general AI as still theoretical. Narrow AI is designed for specific tasks, while general AI refers to machines able to perform any intellectual task a human can.4

A moving target

The meaning also drifts over time. The AI effect is the phenomenon in which advances in AI lead to a redefinition of what counts as intelligence, so achieved capabilities are no longer seen as real intelligence.5 A commonly cited formulation is Tesler's theorem, often expressed as AI being whatever has not been done yet.