Why Do You Need to Define AI?

Everyone is talking about AI, and nearly half of the digital/technological budgets for 2024 are aimed at AI. Because of this, everyone should care about what AI is and what kind of AI you want to meet your objectives. You need to know if something is AI or if some vendor or internal developer is just AI-washing what they have to offer. I think it is essential to understand what AI is today because AI is on a journey, and it's vital to know where it came from, what can be done with AI today, and where AI is headed. This way, organizations aren't stuck with pioneering without knowing they are on the edge or using traditional technology wrapped in an AI wrapper to leverage the AI movement. Or you are claiming AI victories by just putting window dressing on conventional technology. AI will be a critical player on your team soon, so to get to know AI early, I tried to identify authoritative definitions and put them in one place for you, including what one version of AI thinks. I also attempted to define a value-added definition of AI, leveraging my past business experience leveraging AI to get started.

General:

Artificial intelligence leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind.

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAI): AI’s primary goal is to build an intelligent machine. The second goal is to find out about the nature of intelligence.

WIKI: Artificial intelligence (AI) – intelligence exhibited by machines or software. It is also the name of the scientific field which studies how to create computers and computer software that are capable of intelligent behavior.

Gartner defines artificial intelligence (AI) as applying advanced analysis and logic-based techniques, including machine learning (ML), to interpret events, support and automate decisions, and take actions. This definition is consistent with the current and emerging state of AI technologies and capabilities, and it acknowledges that AI now generally involves probabilistic analysis (combining probability and logic to assign a value to uncertainty).

Forrester defines “generative AI” as: “A set of technologies and techniques that leverage massive corpuses of data, including large language models, to generate new content (e.g., text, video, images, audio, code). Inputs may be natural language prompts or other non-code and non-traditional inputs.”

Investopedia

The simulation of human intelligence by software-coded heuristics

ChatGPT

AI, or Artificial Intelligence, refers to the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, particularly computer systems. These processes include learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and language understanding. AI technologies aim to enable computers and machines to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as understanding natural language, recognizing patterns, making decisions, and adapting to new information.

Jim Sinur

"AI is the leverage of software and machines to add perception/intelligence to individuals, customer/constituent experiences, processes/tasks and devices to optimize balanced outcomes by interpreting patterns of interest, making highly informed decisions with speed, and taking appropriate proactive or reactive actions considering wide and deep implications all within the context of changing conditions and governance guardrails."

Net: Net:

It is essential to know what kind of AI you are buying. Machine intelligence or generative AI is often represented as the only and most advanced AI. Ensure you understand the AI you are buying or building as many technologies participate in the AI disciplines. It may mean understanding the multiple streams of AI contributing to a solution you may buy or build. It influences what problems you are trying to solve, your testing/debugging, and where it can go off the ranch and get into trouble in places you don’t anticipate. If you want a picture of where AI has come from or where it is likely to head, please click here. The Gartner AI Hype Cycle is another good resource. Better yet, you need to define what kind of AI you want to pursue in line with your business objectives and get ahead of AI’s projected core competencies and technologies for the future.

It would be best if you defined AI for you continuously as it evolves to the ideals declared in the general definitions available. AI is just a set of methods, techniques, and tools that will be used for good and bad outcomes. Remember, AI is not God, and nor should it be used by actors to create an artificial god. Humankind will eventually be supercharged with AI. As always, some will fly too close to the sun.


Additional Reading:

Future of AI

Fear of AI