Home / Artificial Intelligence / What is AI? What is Artificial Intelligence? Artificial Intelligence (AI) aims to make machines think and act like humans. This term covers many technologies, generally referring to systems “capable of imitating or even exceeding human cognitive capacities.” (UNESCO, 2019) AI is everywhere. You likely use it daily without realizing it—think of website chatbots, ChatGPT, Alexa or Siri, or online shopping recommendations. These tools are rapidly improving and becoming easier to use. They are now widely used in education, leading to discussions about AI’s potential benefits, challenges, and ethical questions. Types of AI Generative AI Generative AI, like ChatGPT, DALL·E, and Perplexity AI, creates new content by learning patterns from existing content and other digital information. It then uses that knowledge to generate original text, pictures, or videos. Analytic AI Analytic AI, seen in things like Netflix or Amazon recommendations and systems that optimize supply chains, looks at large amounts of data to find trends, gain insights, and make helpful suggestions. Text AI Text AI technologies, such as Google Translate, tools that read text from images (OCR), and OpenAI’s GPT-4, work with human language in written form. They can translate languages, recognize text, and even create new content. Visual AI Visual AI systems, found in self-driving cars, security cameras, and augmented reality games like Pokémon Go, understand images and videos. They can recognize objects, detect faces, and sort pictures. Key Concepts in AI Machine Learning Machine learning is how computers automatically discover patterns within large collections of data. With so much data available today and powerful computers, machine learning has become the core of modern AI. Big AI models like ChatGPT, called Large Language Models (LLMs), are built using machine learning and neural networks. Natural Language Processing (NLP) Natural Language Processing (NLP) is what allows machines to understand how humans speak and communicate. Interactive AI tools like Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant use NLP to have human-like conversations, answer questions, and provide useful information. Artificial Intelligence What is AI? Student Resources Employee Resources
