I wrote this in February 2020 when I was doing some free training on AI. I decided to save it and I think it still holds well.
If we look at the common definitions of AI, we’ll see that despite providing a useful taxonomy, they all fail to describe what AI means in its entirety. Part of this fault comes from the rapid development of the field, and part from our effort to define something we struggle to understand at a philosophical level.
Looking at them one by one:
“Cool things that computers can’t do.” Even if it sounds cool, this definition looks into the future — the realm of possibilities — while omitting the cool things computers already do. Unlocking a phone with your face sounds pretty cool to me.
“Machines imitating intelligent human behavior.” This is the opposite of the previous. It limits AI to a few narrow tasks machines can do (or imitate) today. We don’t know where the limits are, so setting them too early might be a mistake. The word “artificial” might suggest mimicry, but I think this definition undersells the field.
“Autonomous and adaptive systems.” This applies to AI, but also to many other things. An air conditioner changes the room temperature autonomously, adapting to the outside and indoor temperature, yet it would be hard to sell it as intelligent (despite the efforts of marketing departments). This definition is now old and doesn’t reflect the computational power we have available.
Having said this, I’d define AI as: Artificial (or non-biological) intelligence which is able to correct its behavior in order to adapt to its surroundings or to complete the given tasks.
With this definition I’m trying to describe AI as a behavior we’d expect a machine to have in order to perform the tasks we assign to it — whether in robotics or in mathematical algorithms — without limiting the possibility of achieving intelligence comparable to our own, without necessarily being similar to it.
Reading it today I still stand by my definition. The weakest point is the use of the word “intelligence” – as it is still not clearly defined what intelligence means, so I clearly used it as escape from providing my own definition. It will have to do for now, I believe as the field evolves, we would be able to provide a clearer definition and taxonomy.