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What is Artificial Intelligence?

Welcome to your first lesson! Here you will discover what Artificial Intelligence (AI) really means, and why it is less mysterious than you might think.

What Does "Artificial Intelligence" Mean?

Artificial Intelligence describes computer programs that can handle tasks typically requiring human intelligence: understanding text, recognizing images, making decisions, or translating languages.

Good to know: AI is not a single program but an umbrella term for many different technologies. ChatGPT, Siri, the face recognition on your phone: these are all forms of AI.

Strong vs. Weak AI

In movies, we often see AI systems that think and feel like humans. This is called strong AI (or AGI – Artificial General Intelligence). A complete AGI does not exist yet, but the boundaries are blurring: current models are becoming increasingly versatile, handling more and more different tasks at a high level.

What we have today is weak AI (also called "narrow AI"): systems that are very good at one specific task but nothing else. A chess program can beat world champions, but it cannot recommend a recipe.

Strong AI (not yet achieved)

Thinks, feels, and learns like a human. Can solve any task. Not yet achieved, but research is advancing rapidly. The boundary to narrow AI is becoming increasingly blurred.

Today's AI (increasingly versatile)

Specialized, but increasingly versatile. GPT-5 and Gemini already process text, images, and audio simultaneously. The boundaries between tasks are dissolving.

How Does AI "Learn"?

Modern AI systems learn from data, similar to how you learn from experience. The process is called Machine Learning:

  1. Collect data: The AI receives huge amounts of examples (texts, images, numbers)
  2. Find patterns: It discovers statistical patterns in this data
  3. Make predictions: Based on the patterns, it can solve new tasks
Easy to remember: An AI is not "programmed" to give a specific answer. It learns from millions of examples which answers are likely to be useful.
What best describes the current state of AI?
Correct! Today's AI systems are "weak AI": specialized but very capable in their domain.
Not quite. Today's AI is "weak AI": it can solve certain tasks excellently but cannot think like a human.
Key Takeaways:
  • AI is an umbrella term for programs that solve "intelligent" tasks
  • Today's AI is "weak AI": specialized but powerful
  • AI learns from data, not from pre-programmed rules
  • "Strong AI" as seen in movies does not exist yet
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