Explainer

If you’ve ever asked your phone for directions, had a misspelled word fixed before you even noticed it, or wondered how your email knows which messages are junk, you’ve already used artificial intelligence. You just might not have called it that.

So what exactly is AI? Think of it like teaching a kid to recognize a dog. You don’t hand them a dictionary definition with every possible shape, size, and color of dog. You show them pictures of dogs — lots of them — and over time they learn to spot one on their own. Artificial intelligence works the same way. It’s a computer program that learns from examples instead of following a rigid set of rules written line by line by a programmer.