Artificial Intelligence

• AI = a machine that simulates human-like intelligent behaviour by learning, deciding, and acting autonomously.
• Two types: Weak/Narrow AI (one job only) vs Strong AI / AGI (any intellectual task, like a human).
• AI has three shared characteristics: it collects data, uses rules to process that data, and has an ability to reason and change its own rules/data.
• An expert system mimics a human expert's knowledge to solve problems — built from four parts: knowledge base, rule base, inference engine, interface.
• Machine learning is one method of achieving AI — it trains a system on data so it improves accuracy over time by spotting patterns.
• AI, and each of its sub-technologies, comes with trade-offs: efficiency and accuracy vs job losses, bias, cost, and lack of "human touch."

Forget the sci-fi robot image for a second. On the exam, AI is defined as a machine that can simulate intelligent behaviours similar to a human. The key word is simulate — it's not actually thinking like a person, it's just really good at behaving as if it were.

Cambridge wants you to describe AI using three specific abilities. Think of them as the "AI checklist":

• Learn — it can acquire new information (from data it's given, or data it collects itself).
• Decide — it can analyse that information and make choices based on it.
• Act autonomously — it can take action without a human telling it what to do each time.

Weak AI vs Strong AI

There are two categories of AI you need to know, and they sit on a scale of "how much can it actually do":

Advantages & Disadvantages of AI