1.1. Understanding Artificial Intelligence

At its core, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a field that seeks to enable machines to learn, reason, and solve problems.

In its simplest form, artificial intelligence is a field that “combines computer science and robust datasets to enable problem-solving,” with the goal of mimicking human thinking.

It’s important to distinguish this from Augmented Intelligence, which has the more modest goal of helping humans with tasks that are impractical to do on their own, such as analyzing thousands of pages of text in minutes.

Computer scientists have identified three distinct levels of AI:

• Narrow AI: Focuses on addressing a single task. Common examples include Siri on an iPhone or the Amazon recommendation engine.
• Broad AI: Handles a wider range of related tasks. This level of AI can be used for global weather prediction or pandemic tracing.
• General AI: The most advanced level, capable of performing any intellectual task that a human can. This includes the ability to think abstractly, strategize, and use previous experiences to come up with new, creative ideas.