Artificial Intelligence Around Us

1What is AI?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is when a computer does a job that normally needs human thinking, such as recognising a face, understanding speech or making a choice. "Artificial" means made by people, not natural.

2AI in everyday tools

• Phones that unlock with your face or fingerprint.
• Voice assistants that answer spoken questions.
• Translation apps that turn one language into another.
• Maps that find the quickest road through traffic.
• Email that moves unwanted "spam" messages away by itself.
• Farm apps that look at a photo of a sick leaf and suggest the plant disease.
• Chat helpers that answer questions in writing.

A calculator or a torch is not AI: it only follows fixed steps and never learns or recognises anything.

3Five big ideas in AI

People who teach AI often explain it with five big ideas:

1. Perception: computers use sensors, such as cameras and microphones, to "see" and "hear" the world.
2. Representation and reasoning: computers keep a model, or picture, of the world inside them and use it to work things out, like a map app planning a route.
3. Learning: computers can get better at a job by studying many examples. Show a computer thousands of photos of cows and goats, and it learns to tell them apart.
4. Natural interaction: AI tries to talk and listen to people in a natural way, with speech and ordinary language.
5. Societal impact: AI can help people a lot, but it can also make mistakes or be unfair, so people must use it wisely.

4Using AI wisely

AI can be wrong. Always check important answers in a book or with your teacher, never share private information with an AI helper, and remember that a person must stay in charge.

Try it yourself

Try each one first, then tap Show answer to check.