Adith Arun

Defining Artificial Intelligence

I think the notion of AI is misused in media and by venture capitalists in pitches.

When did the term AI get so broad and all-encompassing? AI should be reserved for systems that can make decisions independent of human programmed logic. If there is an explicit if-then-else statement or regression weight, it isn’t AI. Using this definition, most things are not AI.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is any mapping between inputs and outputs where one or more parameters are estimated. It is a decision rule that is not based on a pre-determined heuristic.

AI is software written for a specific task where the process to generate the decision rules are known at the outset but the decision rules themselves are not. The decision rules are discovered by the process.

Under this definition, linear regression is artificial intelligence.