What Does 'Artificial Intelligence' Mean Anyway?

There are a lot of definitions of artificial intelligence. Which one do we actually mean?

Sources:

Fetzer, J. H. Artificial Intelligence: Its Scope and Limits. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012.

Goertzel, Ben, and Pei Wang. Advances in Artificial General Intelligence: Concepts, Architectures and Algorithms : Proceedings of the AGI Workshop 2006. IOS Press, 2007.

Lewis, Colin, and Dagmar Monett. Text Analysis of Unstructured Data on Definitions of Intelligence, 2018.

Pfeifer, Rolf, and Christian Scheier. Understanding Intelligence. MIT Press, 2001.

[Ryplinn]

Artificial Intelligence is whatever we haven't figured out how to make computers do yet. Used to be speech, then speech recognition. It's similar to whatever we think separates us from animals: speech, math, schooling, complex social structures; we keep finding other animals that do those. The distinction will continue to shrink until it becomes meaningless.

I don't have a coherent definition of artificial intelligence, but I also don't have a coherent definition of intelligence.

[Corporis]

To me, artificial intelligence is when big computer go

Edit: Ahhh, so close

[FemMushroom]

To me, artificial intelligence means a program that alters itself to improve an outcome.

[jianliang]

My definition of Artificial Intelligence is anything that mimics behavior that previously seems as unique to humans, so by that definition, a calculator is an AI.

[tildex]

Artificial Intelligence:
When a computer uses some sort of complex system to arrive at a decision about situation it hasn't been explicitly programmed for.

By this definition ELIZA is AI, because it can handle any input from the user, reformat it, and present a response, whereas a modern keyword-based answering service might not be AI, as it (could) just look for certain keywords and play a prerecorded response, or forward the call to the extension provided. Note that the voice recognition part of the same answering service _would_ be AI, as it has to interpret fuzzy voice stuff into a series of words.

Hmm, on second thought this isn't a great definition: I was hoping to split out simple calculators from more 'complex' systems, but there's a wide fuzzy band between, eg. ELIZA, which still looks for keywords and reformats the input text based on predictably simple rules, and many neural nets where it can be difficult for us to examine why the 'net made the 'choice' it did. (And I don't want to say that it's the lack of insight into the decision-making process that makes something 'intelligent' - I can see how that line would be unproductive)

Anyways, I usually don't use the term AI (with the exception of "strong AI" - aka a conscious self-aware entity of near-to-super human intelligence), and when others use the term I typically figure out what they mean through context (marketing speak: "there's a computer involved", casual developer conversation: "throw a neural net at it and hope that solves the problem", etc)

[kibrika]

The way I see it used most often, it implies that it's something that "learns". So it's an algorithm that uses "training data" to be able to do it's task.

[Theraot]

I discarded the term Artificial Intelligence before that article. The motivation is that I called Artificial Intelligence to techniques that were considered Artificial Intelligence years ago, but then I got push back telling me something along the lines that "Artificial Intelligence means Machine Learning" to which I do not agree. If anything, Machine Learning is Artificial Intelligence, not the other way around. But well… Since that incident I decided to never call something Artificial Intelligence anyway, it is an umbrella term, It is better if I'm more specific, that would ease communication.

[tone]

Intuitively, I'd say AI is when a computer program can, through training, adapt itself into a form with enough complexity that the humans who created it can no longer meaningfully explain the ways in which it makes decisions, creating the illusion of consciousness.

[TmartFan]

Great video! You might want to consider processing your audio to get rid of the static background noise. Or maybe hang up some sound dampening foam on your walls.

[AntonWongVideo]

I once heard someone say something like "artificial intelligence is whatever computing advancements that are yet to be widely used"

[mwgondim]

I like John Searle's split on "weak AI" and "strong AI". While the former refers to any system which reproduces o emulates a portion of what would be considered "intelligent behaviour" (playing a game, performing a search, retrieving and organising information etc.), the latter would refer to the reproduction of not only behaviour but mental states, such as consciousness, will and so forth. I believe most people without any prior instruction on AI or even programming believe most AI talk refers to strong AI, while it's quite the opposite.

[TheOnyomiMaster]

To me, AI is either of the following:
- software agents that pursue goals (a useful definition for AI safety)
- programs that replicate human or animal cognitive abilities, such as vision and audio processing

[Tom-efmz]

This artificial intelligence is what controls my Skyrim NPC's

[OkezueABell]

I would say artificial intelligence is a distinct technical application of computation where machines are able to learn from data in a variety of ways, and their learnings can be re-executed in a variety of ways.

[KubikDezimeter]

I'd say AI is a program that makes decisions on the basis of some algorithm, which is often but not always created using machine learning. This also includes the subprograms for NPCs in games, are called AI quite often.

[easydaisy]

Artificial Intelligence refers to a vague term used to describe multiple problem solving approaches/algorithms on a computer that can used to obtain a solution by a user.

[willdmindmind]

Basically the current definition of "artificial intelligence" primarily refers to a class of algorithms designed around the concept of artificial "neural networks' which are based on the biological neural networks in the brain. But these software networks are mostly mathematical functions for generating a statistical model based on large volumes of training data to identify similarities (statistical relationships) to patterns of data from the target environment.

On other hand, "intelligence" in a broad biological sense as it relates to neural activity within brains across various species, generally means learning to understand something about the world. And there are various categories of intelligence in that sense based on the taxonomy of various species and behaviors they express.

[unvergebeneid]

Cybernetics is the much cooler sounding term though, so we should use that more often 😄

[jrock]

Artificial Intelligence is when a machine or robot is able to learn on its own like a human. It can learn from mistakes.

[GregersLauge]

I am a statistician, so I think of many things as statistics.
When I think of AI I think of things that I don't understand much of. These are things like neural networks, deep learning, recurring (recursive?, I can't remember the term) networks. In general systems that are very difficult to explain why they behave the way they do.