AI, or artificial intelligence, is the branch of computer science focused on building machines and software capable of performing tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as understanding language, recognizing patterns in images, solving problems, and making decisions under uncertainty. It's a broad field that spans everything from simple rule-based systems to today's large language models and computer vision systems.
Modern AI, and specifically the generative AI behind tools like ChatGPT, is largely powered by machine learning, where systems learn patterns directly from vast amounts of data rather than following manually programmed rules for every possible situation. This data-driven approach is what let AI systems make dramatic leaps in capability over the past decade, though it also means an AI model's behavior is shaped heavily by the data it was trained on, for better and for worse, rather than being explicitly and exhaustively specified by a human programmer.
