What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence is a constellation of many different technologies working

together to enable machines to sense, comprehend, act, and learn with human-like
levels of intelligence. Maybe that’s why it seems as though everyone’s definition
of artificial intelligence is different: AI isn’t just one thing.

Technologies like machine learning and natural language processing are all part of
the AI landscape. Each one is evolving along its own path and, when applied in
combination with data, analytics and automation, can help businesses achieve their
goals, be it improving customer service or optimizing the supply chain.

Narrow (or “weak”) AI

Some go even further to define artificial intelligence as “narrow” and “general”
AI. Most of what we experience in our day-to-day lives is narrow AI, which performs
a single task or a set of closely related tasks. Examples include:

Weather apps
Digital assistants
Software that analyzes data to optimize a given business function
These systems are powerful, but the playing field is narrow: They tend to be
focused on driving efficiencies. But, with the right application, narrow AI has
immense transformational power—and it continues to influence how we work and live
on a global scale.

General (or “strong”) AI

General AI is more like what you see in sci-fi films, where sentient machines
emulate human intelligence, thinking strategically, abstractly and creatively, with
the ability to handle a range of complex tasks. While machines can perform some
tasks better than humans (e.g. data processing), this fully realized vision of
general AI does not yet exist outside the silver screen. That’s why human-machine
collaboration is crucial—in today’s world, artificial intelligence remains an
extension of human capabilities, not a replacement.