What is Artificial Intelligence?
An understandable explanation - no tech jargon, with real examples.
Fundamentally simple
Artificial intelligence refers to the ability of computer systems to handle tasks that normally require human intelligence. This includes understanding language, recognizing patterns, solving problems and making decisions.
What is called AI today is usually specialized systems: They can do one thing very well, but only that one thing. ChatGPT writes brilliant texts but cannot make coffee. This "weak AI" is still revolutionary - because it makes millions of people more productive.
A Brief History of AI
The term "Artificial Intelligence" is coined at the Dartmouth Conference.
IBM's Deep Blue defeats chess world champion Kasparov.
IBM Watson wins Jeopardy against human champions.
Google's AlphaGo defeats the Go world champion - a game considered "uncrackable".
ChatGPT is released and reaches 100 million users in 2 months.
The EU AI Act comes into force. GPT-5 and Claude Opus 4.5 are released.
Types of AI
Weak AI (Narrow AI)
Specialized in one task. This is the AI we use today: ChatGPT for texts, DALL-E for images, GitHub Copilot for code.
Strong AI (AGI)
An AI that could handle any intellectual task of a human. Still science fiction - experts estimate 10-100 years.
Generative AI
AI that creates new content: texts, images, music, code. The area with the greatest current growth.
How does modern AI work?
Modern AI is based on neural networks - structures inspired by the human brain. These networks learn from huge amounts of data: millions of texts, images, conversations. They recognize patterns and can apply them to new situations.
Training a large language model like GPT-4 takes months, costs millions and consumes enormous energy. But once trained, it can respond to queries in fractions of a second.
Häufige Fragen
No, not in the human sense. AI systems are extremely good at recognizing and applying patterns - but they don't really understand what they're doing. They have no consciousness, no feelings, no intentions.
Some yes, but most will change rather than disappear. Historically, technological revolutions have always created more jobs than they destroyed. The difference: The new jobs are different from the old ones.
Like any powerful tool, AI can be misused. The biggest risks currently are disinformation, bias in decision systems and data protection. That's why education is so important - the more people understand AI, the better we can regulate it.