The term “Artificial intelligence” (AI) gets thrown around a lot in the tech space. It’s one of those buzzwords everyone has heard, but few really understand. The U.S. State Dept. quotes the National Artificial Intelligence Act of 2020 saying “The term ‘artificial intelligence’ means a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations or decisions influencing real or virtual environments.” AI comes in many forms; including machine learning, machine vision, artificial general intelligence (AGI), and generative AI.
AI first appeared in the 1950s. Around this time Alan Turing created the Turing test, which would evaluate a machine’s ability to behave similar to humans. Since then AI has been integrated into numerous aspects of everyday life — it’s easy to forget that Apple’s Siri is an AI, along with Amazon’s Alexa. The term AI is often overused as a marketing tool, much like when the Internet of Things (IoT) was the latest craze and every other new device was labeled “Smart.”