What is artificial intelligence?

We talk about artificial intelligence (AI) as if it were a new tenant in the apartment upstairs. She makes odd noises, moves furniture late at night, and leaves us wondering if she’ll borrow sugar or burn the place down. We nod politely and pretend we understand her, though we mostly do not.

Thinking machines

AI is software that mimics human thinking. She sorts patterns, makes predictions, and learns from data. We sometimes imagine her reasoning like a chess master, but she mostly repeats what worked before. She never sighs or chews a pencil.

Everyday work

She writes drafts, labels photos, and suggests what song we might like when we would have preferred silence. She has no idea what she is doing; she only matches shapes in text or numbers. We accept the help, then grumble that she guessed wrong.

The big dream

Some believe she may one day become artificial general intelligence. That is a system able to understand tasks the way people do. She would shift easily between math, music, and making lunch. At present, she still stumbles when we ask her about the toaster manual.

Risks we face

She reflects whatever we feed her. If our data is unfair, she becomes unfair. If our code is sloppy, she is slapstick. We are tempted to trust her more than we should, as if she were a secretary with perfect recall. She is not.

Our small place

We code her routines and watch them wobble like a bicycle without training wheels. Sometimes she balances for a block, and we feel proud. Then she falls into the hedge, and we say we meant for that to happen.