Glossary Terms

artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is software that learns to do things we once assumed only people could do: read and write language, recognise images, answer questions, or find patterns in a pile of information. Instead of following rules a programmer wrote out by hand, an AI system studies a large number of examples and works out the patterns for itself. That is why the same underlying tool can draft an email, summarise a document, and suggest a caption for a photo. For a small business owner, the useful question is rarely how it works and more often what it can reliably do today, and where it still needs a person to check its work.