Definition
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the field of building computer systems that perform tasks associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, perception, and language use. It is an umbrella term for a broad family of techniques, not a single algorithm or product.
How it works
Most modern AI systems are built by training models on data: the model learns statistical patterns from examples and applies them to new inputs to make predictions or generate outputs. Specific approaches such as machine learning and deep learning differ in architecture and training procedure, but they share this general pattern.
Usage
AI powers conversational assistants, image and speech recognition, translation, code generation, and recommendation systems. Chatbots, agents, and large language models in everyday conversation are all concrete applications of AI.
Related and confusable terms
A large language model is one family of AI models trained on massive amounts of text — a much narrower slice of the field. Artificial general intelligence refers to hypothetical systems with human-level generality, and artificial superintelligence to systems beyond human capability; neither describes deployed AI technology.