What is artificial intelligence?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a common description of systems that perform actions in the physical or digital dimension by perceiving their environment, and processing and interpreting huge amounts of information and data. AI systems have the ability to adapt their behavior by analyzing how the environment and conclusions are affected by previous actions.
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It is not a simple task to give a short and precise definition of artificial intelligence. EU appointed a high-level expert group who suggested a definition of artificial intelligence which the European countries could agree upon:
"Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to systems designed by humans that act in the physical or digital world by perceiving their environment, interpreting the collected structured or unstructured data, reasoning on the knowledge derived from this data and deciding the best actions to to achieve the given goal. AI systems can also be designed to learn to adapt their behaviour by analysing how the environment is affected by their previous actions.
As a scientific discipline, AI includes several approaches and techniques, such as machine learning (of which deep learning and reinforcement learning are specific examples), machine reasoning (which includes planning, scheduling, knowledge representation and reasoning, search, and optimization), and robotics (which includes control, perception, sensors and actuators, as well as the integration of all other techniques into cyber-physical systems)."
Norway's national strategy for AI from 2020 is based on EU's definition, and it also gives a relatively short og easily understandable introduction to what AI is.
A closely related and largely overlapping field is data science.
