What is artificial intelligence (AI)?

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AI is the field of building systems that perform tasks normally thought to require human intelligence: perceiving, reasoning, using language, and making decisions. It's a goal and a whole field of study, not a single technology.

Historically AI has taken two broad approaches:

Rule-based (symbolic) AI: humans hand-write the logic and knowledge. This powered early chess engines and "expert systems." It's precise but brittle: it only knows what someone explicitly programmed.
Machine learning: the system learns patterns from data instead of being told the rules. This is what powers almost all of today's AI, including ChatGPT and Claude.

One quirk worth knowing: the goalposts keep moving. Once a capability becomes routine (spam filters, GPS routing, face unlock), we stop calling it "AI" and just call it software (the so-called "AI effect"). It's also why "intelligence" here means capability on a task, not human-like awareness or understanding.

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