Meet Artificial Intelligence

What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a kind of computer software.

Artificial means made by people. Intelligence means being able to learn and solve problems.

So AI is software that people build to do clever tasks, like understanding words, spotting things in pictures, or guessing what comes next.

How is AI different from a normal program?

Most computer programs follow exact rules that a person writes. For example: "If the user clicks the button, show a star."

AI works a different way. Instead of being told every rule, AI learns from examples.

Show an AI thousands of pictures of cats and dogs, and it starts to notice patterns. Soon it can look at a new picture and guess: "That's a cat." Nobody wrote a rule like "a cat has whiskers." The AI found the pattern by itself.

Want to know more about this learning? Read How Does AI Learn?.

Where do you see AI already?

You probably use AI every day:

• Voice helpers turn your speech into words and answer questions.
• Photo search finds all your beach photos without you tagging them.
• Video and music apps suggest what to watch or play next.
• Maps guess the fastest road home.
• Spam filters spot junk email and hide it.

AI is good at some things, not everything

AI can be very fast and helpful. But it is not a magic brain.

AI does not truly understand the world the way you do. It finds patterns in data. So it can be wrong, especially with something new or tricky.

That is why people should always check important AI answers. AI is a tool that helps people. People stay in charge.

AI and coding

AI is built using code. People write programs that let the computer learn.

If you like the idea of telling computers what to do, try Coding. Learning to code is a great first step toward building AI yourself one day.