The field of computer science focused on building systems that perform tasks normally associated with human intelligence.
Artificial intelligence covers a broad range of techniques, from hand-written rules to systems that learn patterns from data. Tasks include understanding language, recognizing images, making predictions, planning, and generating text, images, or code.
The term was coined in the 1950s, and the field has gone through cycles of excitement and disappointment often called AI winters. Recent progress is driven largely by machine learning and especially deep learning, made possible by large datasets and powerful GPUs. It helps to distinguish narrow AI, which is built for specific tasks like spam filtering, from the hypothetical idea of artificial general intelligence that could match humans across most tasks. Today, practically all deployed AI is narrow, even when it appears very capable.
A plain-English map of the state AI laws in effect or enacted as of October 2026, from Colorado's rewritten AI Act to chatbot, hiring and deepfake rules.
Five practical, low-risk AI workflows small business owners can set up this week for email, marketing, quotes and admin, plus the guardrails that keep them safe.
A worked AI ROI formula, the baseline metrics to capture before a pilot starts, and the hidden costs that make AI business cases look better than they are.